A six-month-old baby has been denied a life-saving heart transplant because he is not vaccinated.
August Stoll was born with a complex congenital heart disease. Earlier this month, he underwent emergency surgery at the Vanderbilt Pediatric Heart Institute in Tennessee, but the operation failed, leading his team of cardiologists to conclude that the only way to save the infant’s life was through a heart transplant.
But when they referred the baby to the hospital’s transplant team, its head, David Bearl, told August’s parents Hannah and Clint Stoll that he would refuse to perform the transplant until their son received several childhood vaccines.
“It’s so illogical,” Hannah Stoll told The Epoch Times on June 24. “He’s an immunocompromised baby in critical condition and this doctor wants to pump him up with vaccines... We know it will kill him.”
The Tennessee couple, homeschoolers with four other children, asked Bearl yesterday to reconsider his position, but Hannah said he refused. Stoll said her son is so fragile they can’t even consider moving him to another facility.
Tennessee Republican state Sen. Jack Johnson called Bearl’s decision an “outrage” and told The Epoch Times he is in contact with Vanderbilt in hopes of getting the pediatric heart institute, which is a division of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, to change its position.
“You shouldn’t deny life-saving treatment to a six-month-old baby based on a legitimate concern a parent has,” Johnson said, “As a parent, I would be beside myself. ”
The Epoch Times contacted Bearl and the hospital administration for comment on August’s case, but neither responded. Bearl is listed with Vanderbilt as an assistant professor and Medical Director of the Ventricular Assist Device Program.
According to the schedule of vaccines the children’s hospital’s immunology department provided the Stolls, August would have to receive eight vaccines before the hospital would consider performing the heart transplant.
Also highlighted on the schedule entitled “Recommended Catch-up Immunizations Schedule for Children and Adolescents” is the measles, mump and rubella vaccine, varicella and Hepatitis A vaccines. However, the schedule specifically lists the minimum age for those vaccines as 12 months. August is only 6 months old.
The Stolls have appealed their case to Vanderbilt’s Board of Ethics with hope for an override of Bearl’s position. They have also started an Instagram page called “fightforaugust” to raise awareness to their plight.
Johnson, who spearheaded legislation earlier this year outlawing hospitals from denying organ transplants to patients without COVID vaccines, also emphasized that there is no law in Tennessee that legally requires children to be vaccinated in order to receive medical care. In addition to identifying the vaccines it is requiring for August as “recommended,” Stoll said Bearl admitted to her that it was neither law nor policy that he receive the vaccines. “He told me ‘it’s just how we do things here.’”
In addition to Johnson’s bill, several other states have proposed laws that would ban hospitals from denying unvaccinated patients organ transplants.
In February, a group of Republican congressmen introduced federal legislation called the Stop Arduous Vaccine Enforcement (SAVE) Act in response to the practice.
The legislation is endorsed by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
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