America Hospitals Cling
They tell ailing patients: No COVID shot, no transplant.
W
BY ALICE GIORDANO hile
cooled on
america has its
COVID-19
mandating jab,
heels the
sev-
eral hospitals are still requiring it for those who need lifesaving organ transplants.
It’s happening even in states
where laws have been passed banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates. “I wish that these hospitals would
be held accountable,” said Shannon Buttermore, who was declared ineli- gible for a kidney transplant by New Hampshire’s largest hospital after she refused to get the COVID-19 shot. “They don’t even get a slap on the
hand or anything. It’s insane.” In 2022, the state’s Republican- dominated Legislature passed a patients’ rights bill prohibiting the COVID-19 shot being a requirement for employment or medical treatment. Nevertheless, in a letter dated
just two days before Christmas, the pre-transplant coordinator for Dart- mouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) told Buttermore, a 42-year- old mother of three whose kidneys are only at 12% function: no shot, no transplant. “Before we will start any evaluation
testing, you will need to be COVID vaccinated,” wrote Julia Barry. “This is a requirement of our pro-
gram which every patient needs to fulfi ll. Along the same lines, we will not engage with your donors until you are vaccinated.” The vaccine-or-no-transplant ulti-
matum arose practically overnight at hospitals across the U.S. with the
28 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2025
Dec. 11, 2020, rollout of the emergen- cy use authorization of the COVID-19 vaccination by the FDA. And just as quickly came the law-
suits. At the height of the pandemic,
Dave Peters, a senior staff attorney at Pacific Justice Insti- tute, handled well over 60 patient cases in lawsuits against various hospitals that adopted a COVID-19 vaccine-or-no-transplant ultimatum. Even candidates who had
long been on the waiting list for a transplant, he said, were booted for not agree- ing to take the jab. Children were no exception. One case that made national head-
lines was the story of a 6-month-old baby, August Stoll, who was initially denied a lifesaving heart transplant by Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital
PETERS
because his parents wouldn’t agree to vaccines the facility was requiring for the infant, including the COVID- 19 shot.
Records show the Nashville hos-
pital added the prerequisite for heart transplant surgery the same week the FDA pushed out approval of the shot for infants as young as 6 months. But now with the world
well beyond the pandemic era, the question remains — why are hospitals still insisting on the jab? And why are those with information that backs early suspicions about
the safety of the vaccine still being silenced? As Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was pledging to end cen- sorship, his social media platforms — including Instagram — were doing just the opposite.
to Vaccine Ultimatum
SIGN/RICHLEGG©ISTOCK / HAND/BANJONGSEAL324©ISTOCK
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