Alberta mom who lost son ‘insulted’ by premier’s comments on vaccine status of organ transplant recipients

By Courtney Theriault

It’s been six years since Janet Reyda’s son Alex passed away suddenly.

Quickly after his death, the 25-year-old cattle farmer was deemed a good candidate for organ donation. His gift helped save lives.

“I really took a lot of comfort in knowing that his organs were going to help some people,” said Reyda.

But Reyda feels her son’s donation was insulted last week when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith suggested she may intervene in a controversial transplant case involving a terminally ill patient who refused to take a COVID vaccine.

Annette Lewis filed a legal challenge against Alberta Health Services, doctors and a hospital earlier this year after she was unable to get a lifesaving organ transplant due to her unwillingness to be vaccinated.

Alberta’s Court of Appeal upheld that requirement in a ruling last month.

“I am seeking a second opinion on that particular case,” Smith told reporters Tuesday. “I know that there is at least one other case as well.

“We do not want to see discrimination against anybody on the basis of their booster status or their vaccination status.

“The difficulty with transplant patients is that they do have a protocol they go through to determine who has the best likelihood of survivability. That’s why I need to have a second medical opinion. I don’t want to supersede that.”

Reyda she was “insulted and also just flabbergasted” by Smith’s comments.

“The premier and politics of any sort have no place in those kinds of decisions,” she said.

Dr. Lynora Saxinger, a University of Alberta-based infectious disease specialist, says it’s important not to politicize the discussion of vaccine status as it pertains to organ transplants.

“It’s not a COVID thing, it’s not a political thing, it’s just a risk-based assessment,” said Saxinger.

“I would actually worry about the ethics of transplanting someone who wasn’t comfortable with vaccination because we know there’s a quantifiable risk there and we are not able to do what we would ordinarily want to do to reduce that risk.”

Janet Reyda’s son Alex. (Credit: Janet Reyda/provided)

The rigorous transplant process aims to ensure organs wind up in patients who have the best survival odds.

“And it’s clear that vaccination reduces the risk of severe outcomes in transplant patients as well as everyone else,” added Saxinger.

Saxinger believes Smith is unlikely to find a second opinion to endorse an intervention.

“If people want to review that and make sure that they think it’s adequately robust, I think that’s fine,” said Saxinger. “But I don’t think it’s likely that they’re going to find a problem necessarily because it’s really an objective process as much as possible.”

Meanwhile Reyda hopes the political discussion surrounding COVID won’t further diminish her son’s life-saving gift.

“This gift is just extraordinary and to treat it as if it’s not a big thing, which to my way of thinking it is, is just the ultimate disrespect.”

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