An Ohio hospital is refusing to perform a kidney transplant on a nine-year-old boy because his father refuses to take a Covid-19 vaccine. The Cleveland Clinic is refusing to perform the surgery on third grader Tanner Donaldson because his father, Dane Donaldson, will not submit to their Covid protocol.
The elder Donaldson is a near perfect donor match for his young son, but Cleveland Clinic will not perform the surgery because Dane is not vaccinated against Covid-19.
The family continues to do what it can to deal with Tanner’s condition as of now, but the nine-year-old will need a transplant at some point. The boy was born with only one kidney, which functions at only 18-20 percent. He also has a birth defect that blocks urine from leaving his body.
“He was born with a birth defect called posterior urethral valves. It’s a valve that blocks urine from exiting the body,” Dane told WEWS television in Cleveland.
Dane has eschewed getting the vaccine for religious reasons and out of concern about the side effects of the various shots, which have included blood clotting and inflammation of the heart and the muscles around the heart. The elder Donaldson was also previously infected with the coronavirus and believes that his natural immunity to the virus is enough.
He also objects to how the Covid vaccines are being pushed by authorities.
“It was a little bit thrown down our throat. I mean, it was everywhere we turned,” Dane said. “I couldn’t shop at a grocery store without hearing it over the loudspeaker. So the more it became just studying it, what’s involved in it, is there informed consent? Do I get to see the ingredient list?”
Dane also found out that the hospital will do a transplant from a dead donor who wasn’t vaccinated: “I asked them in that car accident victim, would you vaccinate him on the way to the hospital to rip his kidney out, and they said, ‘No.'”
“A live donor is the best donor for kidneys, but they’ll take a kidney from a deceased person not vaccinated, it makes no sense,” the elder Donaldson said.
Doctors have refused to budge on their position, even though Donaldson has offered to sign a waiver absolving the hospital of responsibility should Tanner get Covid-19 due to the transplant.
The clinic explains their position in a statement:
The health and safety of our patients is our top priority. Cleveland Clinic has recently developed safety protocols for solid organ transplantation that require COVID-19 vaccination to be an active transplant candidate or living donor. Vaccination is particularly important in these patients for their safety.
Living donation for organ transplantation has been a life-saving treatment, but it is not without risks to the donor. For the living donor, preventing COVID-19 infection around the time of their surgery and recovery is crucial. We continually strive to minimize risk to our living donors, and vaccination is an important component to ensure the safest approach and optimal outcomes for donors.
For organ transplantation using a living donor, which involves the living donor undergoing a scheduled surgery, we are requiring COVID-19 vaccination for both donor and recipient before we can proceed with the surgery, for the safety of both.
Also, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says the vaccines are OK: “The FDA-authorized vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective and are the best way to prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19,” the hospital’s statement reads.
The Donaldsons are not the only family who have dealt with Cleveland Clinic’s transplant vaccine mandate. In October, only a week after implementing the policy, Mike Ganim was denied a life-saving kidney transplant when a donor — a stranger who was found to be a near perfect match — emerged, but was not vaccinated. In that case, the surgery was canceled five days prior to the scheduled date owing to the donor’s vaccination status. Ganim was fully vaccinated, but his donor was not.
The Donaldsons continue to hold out hope for a change in policy or, at least, that the clinic would consider their individual case instead of its discriminatory one-size-fits-all policy on vaccination and transplants.
“I don’t know what we do today. You know, I gotta think somewhere out there, that cooler heads would prevail and we could, you know, I’d love it still to be at the Clinic and us come around and have some type of dialogue and say, ‘Okay, you know, let’s look at your case,’” Dane said. “We’re trying to put plan B in place. The number one thing I can do is keep him as healthy as possible and I can remain and keep my health the best I can. But it’s stressful. There’s no doubt about it. You know, it just is.”
