Poilievre, Candidate Baber Call Death of Unvaccinated Woman Denied Organ Transplant ‘Failure of Medical Ethics’

Alberta resident Sheila Annette Lewis. Courtesy of Sheila A. Lewis

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he agrees with comments by Tory candidate and former Ontario MPP Roman Baber that the death of an Alberta woman who was denied an organ transplant because she didn’t want to get COVID-19 vaccination is a failure of medical ethics.

“The Canada Health Act forbids discrimination, but Sheila Lewis was denied transplant because of a lawful medical choice,” Baber said on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 25. Ms. Lewis, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2018 and was told she would not survive without an organ transplant, passed away a day earlier.

“Her death is a tragic failure of medical ethics and the administration of justice. I'll work to right this wrong until the last day of my career. RIP Sheila,” Mr. Baber said.

Quoting Mr. Baber’s post, Mr. Poilievre wrote in a post on Aug. 26, “I couldn’t agree more.”

Taken off Transplant List

Sheila Annette Lewis died on Aug. 24, announced an update that day on a GiveSendGo campaign page created by friends to help her raise funds toward testing and treatment in the United States, where a hospital had been found that did not require COVID-19 vaccination for its transplant patients.

Ms. Lewis died while still waiting for a transplant and on oxygen 24 hours a day, at the age of 58. She was the mother of four and grandmother of two. She provided details of her story and campaign to raise money for treatment in the United States during a July 3 interview.

She filed legal action against Alberta Health Services (AHS), the Alberta hospital, and a group of doctors within the hospital’s transplant program that was looking after her case.

According to details of her argument in a document presented to Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench, after being diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, Ms. Lewis was placed on the transplant waiting list in 2020 and was near the top of the list. However, in March 2021, she was informed that the transplant team required patients to have received a COVID-19 vaccine in order to receive a transplant.

By court order, the organ she required, the transplant program city, the name of the treating hospital, and the six doctors involved were placed on a publication ban.

Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench Justice R.P. Belzil found on July 12, 2022, that Ms. Lewis’ removal from the transplant list was a “clinical judgment” decision of her doctors, rather than a violation of her charter rights, and therefore the charter did not apply.

Ms. Lewis went to the Alberta Court of Appeal later that year and was again unsuccessful, with the three-judges panel ruling in November that the COVID-19 vaccine requirement was not a “prohibition on access to medical treatment at all; indeed, it is part of the medical treatment.”

The judges said, “The efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines is not on trial ... and in any event, this Court would be ill-equipped to make any evidentiary determinations,” adding that they were not persuaded that the court “can, or ought to, interfere with generalized medical judgments and individualized clinical assessments” involving her standard of care.

The court ruled that Ms. Lewis needed to pay legal costs to AHS and the transplant doctors for both trials she lost. Ms. Lewis took her fight for a transplant all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, but on June 8, was denied leave to appeal—that is, the highest court in the land declined to hear her case.

Out of Time

The ill woman said she obtained private testing showing she had natural immunity—very high levels of antibodies to COVID—but AHS and her doctors would not reconsider their decision to drop her off the transplant list.

Her GiveSendGo fundraising update of her death on Aug. 24 said she had intended to go to the United States for medical care but ran out of time.

Ms. Lewis was not the only Canadian who died after being refused a life-saving organ transplant because of vaccination status. Garnet Harper, a 35-year old Ontario husband and father of five young children, died on May 22 after suffering from kidney failure and denied a transplant by the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) because he did not want the COVID shot.

Garnet Harper, who was denied an organ transplant because of his vaccination status. Courtesy of Meghan Harper

A few days after Mr. Harper, who had Stage 5 renal failure, passed away, the LHSC changed its policy and told The Epoch Times in a July 27 statement that it would “no longer require transplant patients to have at least two doses of COVID 19 vaccine, although it is still highly recommended.”

His wife Meghan Harper told The Epoch Times in a July 25 interview that the LHSC had responsibility for her husband’s death.

“Experimental medicine should never have been mandated. Even the provincial guidelines they cite as directives for their harsh policy called the injection a recommendation and not a requirement,” Mrs. Harper said.

The hospital even refused an offer by Mr. Harper’s brothers to donate a kidney. The sick father started dialysis, but contracted a serious staph infection, an infected lung, and temporarily lost the ability to walk. While on dialysis waiting for a transplant, he suffered a stroke.

“He had a stroke that he suffered in the middle of the night, which is a complication of long-term hemodialysis. … That’s ultimately how he passed,” said Mrs. Harper.

While she was watching her husband die, an organ donation program called to ask for Mr. Harper’s organs, stating the donation could save up to eight other lives.

Mrs. Harper declined.

Doug Lett, Matthew Horwood, and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.