Unvaccinated woman faces removal from organ transplant list and the court is siding with the hospital

Lewis said she will 'die without a transplant,' and asks that the Alberta Court of Appeal see that COVID vaccine requirements is a 'definitive violation of (her) fundamental freedom of conscience and rights to life.'

Unvaccinated woman faces removal from organ transplant list and the Court is siding with the hospital
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A terminally ill woman continues to face refusal while awaiting an organ transplant. Sheila Annette Lewis, 57, has been waiting on an organ transplant list, however Alberta Health Services (AHS) and six local doctors are saying she cannot proceed with the process unless she receives her COVID vaccines. 

Rebel News did report on this back in July of this year and interviewed Sheila Annette Lewis about her unfortunate situation dealing with the AHS.

According to the Edmonton Journal, Lewis said the requirements “violated her Charter rights,” and the AHS said that they have an “obligation to donors, their families and other patients to make sure organs are used on patients with the highest chance of surviving.” 

In another article posted by the Edmonton Journal in late June said: 

A restricted access order and publication ban prevent Postmedia from identifying the specific organ Lewis requires, as well as the name of the hospital and the doctors involved. 

Lewis, 57, says she will die without the transplant. She first met with a team of doctors in 2019 after she developed serious health problems and was placed on a waitlist for the organ in June 2020. 

Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Paul Belzil rejected Lewis’ application, saying that by applying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to clinical judgments of physicians would create “two classes” of organ recipients and result in “medical chaos with patients seeking endless judicial review of clinical treatment decisions.”

The Edmonton Journal quoted Belzil, saying that it came down to whether physicians, who are legally “independant contractors” liable to their patients, are free to exercise their clinical judgment: 

In her notice of appeal, Lewis’ lawyers said Belzil made legal errors in finding the vaccine requirement was a clinical decision, rather than an “imposition” by “state agents” carrying out an AHS policy. 

They argued that Belzil erred by finding AHS was not subject to charter scrutiny “because AHS was simply mirroring the respondent physicians’ requirement.” 

The appeal also claims Belzil was wrong to conclude COVID vaccines are safe and effective — a fact Belzil said was supported by “overwhelming evidence” but ultimately not the deciding factor in his decision. 

The AHS had dropped their vaccine mandate back in July and Lewis is only asking that the Alberta Court of Appeal see that COVID vaccine requirements is a “definitive violation of (her) fundamental freedom of conscience and rights to life, liberty, security of person, and to freedom from arbitrary discrimination.”

A date for Lewis’s hearing for an appeal has not been set yet.

“Alberta Health Services and the six doctors named in Lewis’s injunction said COVID vaccines are required for organ transplant patients because the immune suppressing drugs used to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ make them uniquely susceptible to dying from the illness,” said the Journal. “One group of patients who caught the virus without a pre-transplant vaccine suffered a 40% mortality rate.”

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