It's not unconstitutional to refuse an organ transplant to a woman who refuses to get the COVID-19 vaccine, an Edmonton judge has ruled.
Annette Lewis went to court seeking to preserve her spot on an Edmonton-based transplant program's wait-list after doctors told her she would not be eligible because she is not immunized against COVID-19.
In a decision filed Tuesday, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Paul Belzil dismissed Lewis's argument that her Charter rights had been violated.
He ruled the Charter has no application to clinical treatment decisions and, in particular, has no application to doctors establishing criteria for organ transplantation. There is a publication ban on identifying the specific organ.
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Decisions to add a patient to the transplant list are made by a committee of medical experts who consider the recipients' severity of need and likelihood of survival.
Court heard that because these organ donors are scarce, one in five people on the Edmonton wait-list die before getting a transplant.
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In his reasons for decision, Belzil agreed that it was "beyond dispute" that Lewis is the sole decision-maker about what goes into her body and that she is entitled to her beliefs about vaccines.
"I do not accept however, that her beliefs and desire to protect her bodily integrity entitle her to impact the rights of other patients or the integrity of the [transplant program] generally," the judge said. "No one has a right to receive [organ] transplants and no one is forced to undergo transplantation surgery."
Belzil also found that if Lewis' application were successful, it would have significant negative public policy implications, be unfair to other patients and disrupt the transplant program.
