OAN Staff Abril Elfi
11:32 AM – Wednesday, February 12, 2025
A 12-year-old girl, who is a distant relative of Vice President JD Vance, has been denied a spot on a heart transplant list. Her parents claim that it is due to her not been vaccinated for COVID-19 and the flu.
According to a report from The Cincinnati Enquirer, Adaline Deal was born with two rare heart conditions that her family knew would one day require a transplant, her mother Janeen Deal told the outlet.
She continued stating that Adaline, a distant relative of Vance by marriage through his half-siblings, has been treated at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for nearly 10 years. Her parents hoped she would one day get her heart transplant there.
However, Adaline’s parents have claimed that the hospital requires vaccination in order to get a transplant and have declined making an exception after they were told it goes against the family’s religious beliefs as nondenominational Christians.
“I thought, wow. So, it’s not about the kid. It’s not about saving her life,” Janeen Deal told the outlet.
Janeen stated that she and her husband had chosen not to vaccinate Adaline against COVID-19 or the flu after “the Holy Spirit put it on our hearts.”
Reports suggested that vaccines against preventable diseases are recommended for transplant recipients since those patients are much more vulnerable to infections.
According to Doctor Camille Kotton, Adaline, who has Ebstein’s anomaly and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, has a higher risk of death if infected with COVID compared to other patients.
“The first year after transplant is when they’re at highest risk for infection, but they do have a lifelong risk of severe disease and transplant patients are still dying because of COVID-19,” Kotton said.
Nonetheless, her parents, who adopted Adaline when she was 4-years-old from China, believed that their family, including their 11 other children, would not have any problems with COVID-19 after the transplant.
“We’ll take it as we can if it happens,” Janeen said. “But I know I cannot put this (vaccine) in her body knowing what we know and how we feel about it.”
A Cincinnati Children’s spokesperson declined to confirm that Adaline had been removed from the transplant list, but did tell The Cincinnati Enquirer that the hospital’s clinical decisions are “guided by science research and best practices” and that the hospital follows National Institutes of Health recommendations.
“We tailor care plans to each patient in collaboration with their family to ensure the safest, most effective treatment,” spokesperson Bo McMillan said.
Adaline’s family is hoping to take her to a different hospital to receive the transplant. A GoFundMe for the cause has raised over $50,000 as of Wednesday morning.
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