Hospital Says The Unvaccinated Will Be Denied Organ Transplants
As we continue to push forward into the latter stages of the coronavirus pandemic, a rift is growing within American society between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Today, roughly 56% of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with nearly 70% having received at least one dose of these inoculations.
But of those who are not currently vaccinated, few are planning to. We’ve hit a line of hesitancy that is undoubtedly drawn on bodily sovereignty and personal choice, which has caused some organizations to begin treating the unvaccinated like second-class citizens, believing that this may goad them into compliance.
The latest example of this comes to us from Colorado, where one hospital system is considering denying care to those who’ve chosen not to be inoculated.
A Colorado-based health system says it is denying organ transplants to patients not vaccinated against the coronavirus in “almost all situations,” citing studies that show these patients are much more likely to die if they get covid-19.
The policy illustrates the growing costs of being unvaccinated and wades into deeply controversial territory — the use of immunization status to decide who gets limited medical care. The mere idea of prioritizing the vaccinated for rationed health resources has drawn intense backlash, as overwhelmingly unvaccinated covid-19 patients push some hospitals to adopt “crisis standards of care,” in which health systems can prioritize patients for scarce resources based largely on their likelihood of survival.
Congressional Republicans were furious.
UCHealth’s rules for transplants entered the spotlight Tuesday when Colorado state Rep. Tim Geitner (R) said it denied a kidney transplant to a Colorado Springs woman because she was not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Calling the decision “disgusting” and discriminatory, Geitner shared a letter that he said the patient received last week from UCHealth’s transplant center at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus in the city of Aurora.
The news comes after several airlines and concert venues have announced that they will require proof of vaccination for customers, and as this growing discrimination continues to affect Americans who’ve made this medical decision.
