Unvaccinated Boston-area man in need of a heart not placed on transplant list

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DJ Ferguson, a 31-year-old Boston-area man in need of a new heart, will not be listed for a heart transplant due to not having had the COVID-19 vaccination, according to a Tuesday update to an online fund drive.

The page and multiple reports state he is receiving treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The hospital could not confirm or deny Ferguson’s placement there due to federal medical privacy law, but released a statement Wednesday that its organ transplant policy “requires several CDC-recommended vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine, and lifestyle behaviors for transplant candidates” to optimize the operation’s success and patient health following the procedure.

Patients who do not meet these qualifications are not placed on the waitlist, according to the statement.

Dr. Robert Truog, a professor of medical ethics, anesthesia and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director for its Center for Bioethics, said that decisions like this should not be interpreted as punishment for those who choose not to receive the COVID-19 — or any other — required vaccination, but instead as a commitment to the organ transplant’s success.

“It’s really important to differentiate between punishing someone who has chosen not to be vaccinated and taking into account factors that may affect the success of the transplant,” Truog said. “We owe it to those people who have chosen to be organ donors to be good stewards of that gift and that that gift actually helps somebody.”

Vaccinations are required, Truog said, because organ recipients are severely immunosuppressed following the procedure and at a higher risk of death should they contract an illness, including COVID-19.

Around half of the 100,000 candidates on organ transplant waitlists “will not receive an organ within five years” due to shortages of available organs, according to the hospital statement. Those lists, the statement adds, are “everchanging and are based on many patient and donor factors.”

“Competition for organs is fierce,” said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. “It’s not you versus a couple people, it’s you against thousands of people.”

The update on GoFundMe said that Ferguson is fearful of the vaccine’s possible effects on his weak heart, and that he “can NOT afford for his heart to swell any more than it already is right now.”

Caplan said that there is a “very rare” chance the vaccine could cause heart inflammation, but that the risk of COVID causing the same thing is much greater.

Ferguson “went through all the testing to be put on the transplant list and passed with flying colors since he’s young and healthy aside from the heart failure,” stated a Tuesday update on the Ferguson Relief and Medical Fund GoFundMe drive page organized by Amanda Brodeur, who on the page lists Ferguson as a friend.

Ferguson doesn’t believe in the vaccine, his father, David Ferguson, said, according to the New York Post. Family and friends of Ferguson could not be reached for comment Wednesday.



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