Fennville mom ends lawsuit against DeVos Children's Hospital over vaccine requirement
GRAND RAPIDS — A Fennville woman has withdrawn her lawsuit alleging her daughter was discriminated against by a Spectrum Health hospital for refusing several vaccines.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, alleged violations of Jenna Campau's 17-year-old daughter's civil rights by the hospital network.
Campau said her daughter Alisa, diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease, was seeking a kidney transplant but that the process had been stalled at the medical evaluation stage due to Helen DeVos Children's Hospital's requirement that she receive several vaccines first, including the vaccine for COVID-19.
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In a statement, Campau said the hospital has since performed the medical evaluations that were at issue in the lawsuit. A voluntary dismissal of the case was filed by Campau on July 8.
"At Spectrum Health, the health and safety of our patients are of utmost concern. Due to patient privacy guidelines, we are unable to discuss specific patient situations," a spokesperson for Spectrum Health said in response to a request for comment.
The lawsuit was financed by We the Patriots USA, a Connecticut-based nonprofit that has paid the legal bills for several people suing their employers over COVID-19 vaccine requirements.
The Campaus said they held religious objections to vaccines "produced or researched using aborted fetal cells."
The COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any fetal cells. Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines, originally derived from aborted fetal cells, in testing the efficacy of those vaccines, and Johnson and Johnson used a fetal cell line to produce and manufacture its vaccine.
Medical associations, including the American Society of Transplantation, have strongly recommended that prospective organ transplant recipients be vaccinated against COVID-19 because they may be especially vulnerable to complications from the disease following a transplant. Following a transplant procedure, patients take anti-rejection medications which weaken the immune system.
Up-to-date vaccinations and even sometimes lifestyle prerequisites, such as not being a habitual smoker, are required by many transplant centers seeking to ensure the best chance of health and survival in transplant recipients. Several hospital systems reportedly require organ transplant recipients to be vaccinated against COVID-19, including UCHealth, in Colorado, and University of Washington medical centers.
We the Patriots celebrated the development in Campau's case as a victory in a press release announcing the end of the litigation.
"We are convinced that their (We the Patriots') facilitation of legal defense was absolutely the reason that Alisa has now received the medical evaluations that were previously denied," said Jenna Campau in a statement. "Without their help, we are certain that Alisa would still be denied access to these evaluations, which are a necessary prerequisite for the kidney transplant list."
The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, which means the Campaus retain the right to file another lawsuit over the matter in the future.
— Contact reporter Carolyn Muyskens at cmuyskens@hollandsentinel.com and follow her on Twitter at @cjmuyskens.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Fennville mom ends dispute with DeVos Children's Hospital over vaccine requirement
