Vice President JD Vance’s family is speaking out after a relative was reportedly denied a life-saving heart transplant due to her unvaccinated status. Vance’s relative, Janeen Deal, publicly shared the news, criticizing healthcare institutions that require the COVID-19 vaccine for medical procedures like organ transplants. She expressed her frustration over what she views as discrimination against unvaccinated individuals, raising questions about the fairness of such policies.
Adaline Deal, a 12-year-old distant relative of Vance by marriage through his half-siblings, was reportedly removed from a heart transplant list after doctors deemed her ineligible. According to his family, the decision was based on her failure to receive vaccinations against COVID-19 and the flu. Her parents refrained from vaccinating their child because they believed “the Holy Spirit put it on our hearts.” However, doctors refused to make an exception. She was reportedly born with two heart conditions that her family knew about when they adopted her from China at the age of four.
Deal has been undergoing treatment for Ebstein’s anomaly and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for nearly ten years.
“I thought, wow. So, it’s not about the kid. It’s not about saving her life,” Janeen Deal said, per the New York Post.
Dr. Camille Kotton, the clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, explained that patients face the highest risk of infection in the first year following a transplant. This was the primary reason the hospital declined to proceed with Adaline Deal’s transplant.
However, her family expressed confidence that their daughter would not face life-threatening consequences from a COVID-19 infection following the heart transplant.
“We’ll take it as we can if it happens,” Adaline’s mother said. “But I know I cannot put this (vaccine) in her body knowing what we know and how we feel about it.”