Vaccine Transplant Policy Should Be Changed, Lawyers Say After Woman’s Death

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

Some legal experts say there is no reason governments can’t make changes that would allow organ transplants for people who decline to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

Last week saw the death of Sheila Annette Lewis, an Alberta women who had been in a long-running legal battle with Alberta Health Services over her vaccination status. She needed a life-saving organ transplant but refused to get a COVID vaccine, which is a requirement to receive a transplant in her province.

Responding to requests to intervene in Ms. Lewis’s case, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said earlier this year that after seeking two medical opinions on the case, she decided to leave it to medical experts and see how the process plays out in the courts.

On the Jan. 16 show of podcaster Shaun Newman, she said doctors need to consider how to best ensure patients don’t reject the new organ, which is in limited supply, and noted that the “medical opinion was that [the COVID vaccine] is one of the things that ensures greater survivability.”

“I do believe in medical choice. I think that issue of transplant is a bit unique, because we’re talking about putting people on immunosuppressant drugs,” the premier said. “That’s why I want to defer to the medical experts on that.”

Alberta lawyer Leighton Grey, who had consulted on Ms. Lewis’s case in the past, says the risks that come with taking the COVID vaccine itself also shouldn’t be ruled out.

“Because of her respiratory illness, she was in a very high-risk category for taking the COVID-19 vaccines,” Mr. Grey said in an interview.

Data published as part of a study by the government-funded Canadian National Vaccine Safety (CANVAS) Network shows that for every 45 COVID vaccine doses administered, there was one self-report of a symptom affecting the cardiorespiratory system. The number is higher than what’s reported by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), whose reported adverse events are 0.056 percent of the total doses administered. PHAC also says its surveillance system is “passive” and “suffers from underreporting,” and that it relies on projects like CANVAS to gain a better picture of vaccine safety.

Role for Politicians

Ms. Lewis challenged the decision to deny her an organ through the legal system. As the courts sided against her, she asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear her case, but the top court declined her request.

Mr. Grey says that while it’s a pity the Supreme Court didn’t hear her case, as it’s a “really serious legal issue,” politicians can also legislate in such cases to ensure people like Ms. Lewis aren’t denied life-saving transplants.

Through legislation, for example, lawmakers have brought in medical assistance in dying (MAiD), and in some jurisdictions like Quebec, palliative care homes are being compelled to offer assisted suicide.

Mr. Grey says it shows how “Marxist ideology has bled into institutions including health care,” based on the fact that MAiD is getting ever more liberalized in law while there are no legislative or policy options being offered by different governmental levels in the case of Ms. Lewis.

“Fundamentally, if you don’t place an intrinsic value on human life, then it becomes OK to kill people. And we know based on reliable statistics that in the 20th century alone, Marxism killed 94 million people in places like the Soviet Union and communist China and North Korea,” he said.

“I think it is a call to action for public public health-care policy-makers and governments to seriously assess what they are doing. Because if the goal of the health-care system is to preserve life, it doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job. It certainly didn’t save Sheila Lewis.”

‘Top-Down Measure’

Toronto lawyer Michael Alexander, with the firm Litigationworks, said he is “astonished” transplant centres are still requiring the vaccine.

“This is just a top-down measure left over from the peak of the COVID era,” he told The Epoch Times. “I’m astonished that our health-care system is still so behind the curve on the science.”

Mr. Alexander also think that the government has a role to play.

“I would say the minister of health should … send a message to the health-care system, that this kind of decision is unacceptable and is no longer supported by the science,” said Mr. Alexander.

“You have things going on within hospital systems that are based on policies, but the policies actually don’t have the force of law. Nonetheless, they’re held out as having the force of law.”

‘Could Actually Happen Again’

Mr. Grey said while Canada is a democracy, many of the decisions that affect people’s lives are made by bureaucrats who are not directly accountable to the people. Or, in some cases, those decisions are made by judges.

“I think it’s shocking … the same rules that killed Sheila Lewis in terms of vaccination are still in place right now. It could actually happen again,” he said.

“These courts were told that she was … going to die if she didn’t receive that life-saving transplant, and yet twice they denied her,” he said. “And the problem is, if Albertans don’t like those decisions, they can’t vote those judges out of office.”

However, others see it differently.

The professional group for those working in transplants in Canada said the question of vaccine status is a health-care decision made by local teams.

“The Canadian Society of Transplantation strongly recommends that all patients waiting for a transplant received COVID-19 vaccination,” said Dr. Deepali Kumar in an e-mail to The Epoch Times.

“However, the vaccination policies are set at the local level by individual centres. Requiring COVID vaccination is a medical criteria similar to the requirement for stopping smoking before lung transplant or stopping alcohol before a liver transplant.”

Dr. Kumar added that individual centres also “regularly review their policies” and may change them based on the “severity of COVID in the transplant population, the availability of treatments, and population immunity.”

That ability to change the rules locally was highlighted tragically in the case of Garnet Harper, a 35-year-old man from Sudbury. He died in May after being denied a transplant because of his refusal to get a COVID shot.

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

Mr. Harper and his family lobbied the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) for months to get him onto a transplant list. However, he died of complications from dialysis.

In May, the same month Mr. Harper died, the LHSC changed its policy on COVID-19 vaccines. While it is still recommended, it is no longer required, according to a previous statement LHSC  sent to The Epoch Times in July.

Marco Navarro-Genie, a former political studies professor and head of the Haultain Institute in Calgary, says colleges, which are the governing bodies for doctors across the country, became more authoritarian during COVID—for example warning doctors against trying certain COVID treatments for their patients. He said this was unfortunate.

“Science is not black and white,” he said. “Science is essentially a consensus that goes back and forth between scientists. But we want to give this vaccine some air of absoluteness, which has nothing to do with science.”

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.