JD Vance’s 12-year-old relative denied heart transplant because she is unvaccinated
By: Isabel Keane (New York Post)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A 12-year-old Indiana girl who is related to Vice President JD Vance has been barred from a spot on a heart transplant list because she's not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu, according to her parents.
Adaline Deal, a distant relative of the VP by marriage through his half-siblings, was born with two rare heart conditions that her family knew would one day require a transplant, her mother Janeen Deal told The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Adaline — who was adopted from China when she was 4 — was treated at Cincinnati Children's Hospital for nearly 10 years, and her parents hoped she would get the transplant there.
But the hospital requires transplant patients to be vaccinated, and declined to make an exemption even when told it goes against the family's religious beliefs as nondenominational Christians, the parents said.
"I thought, wow. So, it's not about the kid. It's not about saving her life," Janeen Deal told the newspaper of the hospital's decision to deny her daughter.
The mom, who believes vaccines are unsafe, said she and her husband decided not to vaccinate Adaline against COVID-19 or the flu after "the Holy Spirit put it on our hearts."
Vaccinations against preventable diseases are recommended for transplant recipients because those patients are much more vulnerable to infections.
For patients with severe illnesses like Adaline, who has Ebstein's anomaly and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, there is a higher risk of death if infected with COVID compared to other patients, according to Dr. Camille Kotton, the clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"The first year after transplant is when they're at highest risk for infection, but they do have a lifelong risk of severe disease and transplant patients are still dying because of COVID-19," Kotton said.
Janeen, however, said she was confident her family, including their 11 other children, would not have any problems with COVID-19 after the transplant.
"We'll take it as we can if it happens," Janeen said. "But I know I cannot put this (vaccine) in her body knowing what we know and how we feel about it."
A Cincinnati Children's spokesperson declined to confirm that Adaline had been kept off the transplant list, but told the Enquirer that the hospital's clinical decisions are "guided by science research and best practices" and that the hospital follows guidelines from the National Institutes of Health.
"We tailor care plans to each patient in collaboration with their family to ensure the safest, most effective treatment," spokesperson Bo McMillan said.
Adaline's parents now hope to take her to a different transplant center that won't require her to be vaccinated, with a GoFundMe for the transplant raising more than $50,000 as of Wednesday morning.
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Apparently they DON'T tailor care plans to each patient.
Regardless of who they are related to, this is NOT how to take care of people.
Organs are limited in supply, and not putting them in unvaccinated patients helps to ensure that they are not given to those who will not care for them. It's the same as not giving a donated heart to a smoker or a donated liver to a heavy drinker.
You don't have to agree, but there are good reasons for this policy, and the patient's relationship to Vance has literally nothing to do with it. That's just a red herring to stir up poutrage.
I would have thought good parents would have got her vaccinated in order to get to heart transplant
FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Considering she will live the rest of her life on immunosuppressants, they should.
They want to be the beneficiaries of medical science, but not if it contradicts the medical advice of the "Holy Spirit". I wonder why there's no protocol for organ transplantation and subsequent anti-rejection measures in the Bible? Seems to me that that leaves people up to believing the "Holy Spirit" tells them whatever they want to hear.
I have little patience for people like this.
You don't think vaccines are safe? Really. The math says you're stupid, but OK.
Know what really, really isn't safe??..... heart transplants. Best case, this little girl has a 12-20% chance she doesn't survive the first 36 months. So by ALL MEANS, let's fucking reduce her survival chances.
We should be flogging these people in the town square.
This is not about the parents delusional beliefs, this is about the child living or dying. They need to get over themselves