A Michigan mother is suing a hospital for requiring her daughter to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before getting a kidney transplant.
Jenna Campau, of Fennville, adopted the 17-year-old girl from Ukraine in 2021, according to her complaint filed Friday in US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, the Detroit News reported.
The teen — identified as A.C. in court documents — is battling chronic kidney disease with just one of two organs to filter her blood while receiving dialysis at DeVos Children’s Hospital.
But doctors at the Grand Rapids hospital have said the teen must adhere to pre-transplant requirements in order to receive the new kidney, including being vaccinated for COVID-19, the flu and human papillomavirus, the lawsuit alleges.
Campau and her husband claim the requirement violates their civil rights protections since they reject any vaccine produced or researched using “aborted fetal cells and also genetic modifications or therapies that involve combing human and cells or DNA,” according to the filing.
It’s common for hospitals to mandate transplant recipients be vaccinated prior to operations because they could get sick or die from infections afterward, a bioethicist working as a professor at Michigan State University’s College of Medicine told the newspaper.
“Patients have the right to take risks with regard to making judgments about their own health care,” Leonard Fleck said. “But some kinds of risks are too likely and too serious for a physician to cooperate with the patient in allowing them to take that risk.”
Researchers used cultures derived from fetal cells from elective abortions in the 1970s and 1980 while developing the Pfizer and Modern vaccines to test them, the Detroit News reported.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was manufactured using those cultures, but there are no fetal cells in any of the three COVID-19 vaccines, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Campau also cited the Old Testament’s Book of Leviticus, saying her family won’t accept vaccines containing products from “unclean” animals due to their religious beliefs, the Detroit News reported.
The lawsuit claims the girl, who has been treated at the hospital for nearly a year, was given a pamphlet earlier this month that cited “refusal of childhood vaccinations as recommended” as a reason why a patient might not qualify for a transplant, MLive.com reported.
But the pamphlet didn’t specify that COVID-19, influenza and HPV vaccines were required, according to the filing. Campau wants a judge to declare the hospital’s refusal to provide the transplant as unlawful, according to MLive.com.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs a waiting list under a federal contract, does not have vaccine requirements. Hospitals instead make those decisions, Campau’s lawsuit claims.
“Those policies effectively require the plaintiff to either violate her religious beliefs or deny her daughter life-saving medical care,” the filing reads.
Campau is worried her daughter will turn 18 soon and be removed from a pediatric transplant list before the matter is resolved, the Detriot News reported.
Staff at the hospital threatened to call child welfare officials regarding the family’s refusal to vaccinate the teen, Campau said at a news conference Monday.
Hospital officials declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.
“At Spectrum Health, the health and safety of our patients are of utmost concern,” the West Michigan-based health care network told the Detroit News in a statement.
The average wait time for a kidney transplant in the United States is roughly 3 ½ years, according to the National Kidney Foundation.
