6-Month-Old Unvaccinated Baby Denied Heart Transplant Gets Approval For Surgery

Nashville -- A 6-month-old baby boy who was denied a heart transplant in Tennessee after his evangelical parents refused to get him vaccinated, has now received the approval for surgery after the parents fought against the vaccine orders.

The infant identified as August Stoll eventually made it to the transplant list at Vanderbilt’s Children’s Hospital in Nashville after his mother slammed the doctors for giving them an "ultimatum" to vaccinate the baby for him to be eligible for the surgery, NY Post reported.

August was diagnosed with a rare form of congenital heart disease and "almost died from heart failure" when he was just 12 days old.

Since the diagnosis, the child has been in and out of the hospital, and also underwent open-heart surgery on June 8. Although the surgery was initially believed to be successful, the doctors later informed the parents that it did not go as per their plans.

After the failed surgery, the only way out suggested for August was to get a heart transplant and he was placed on a ventilator.

"His heart cannot even function well enough to help him breathe. He is in terrible condition. He is dying," Hannah Stoll, August's mother wrote on Tennesse Stands, a website of her religious organization.

However, the transplant team at Vanderbilt University Hospital initially denied the surgery saying if August was not administered a series of vaccines, he would be kept off the transplant list.

Hannah also alleged that one of the doctors specifically used the phrase, "I am mandating," about 8 times during her conversation with him. She further added that even after raising concerns about vaccinating the immunocompromised child, the doctor stood by his stand.

"I firmly believe with absolute confidence that it is despicable, unethical, heartless, and disgusting to withhold a heart from a 6-month-old baby over this. I believe loading his body on these [vaccines] will kill him. I believe it is within my rights as a parent to choose this for him. I believe that this doctor holding this over us is motivated by ego," she wrote.

Meanwhile, it is unclear which vaccines the doctors wanted to be administered to the child.

According to the guidelines of the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), babies at the age of six months should be administered vaccines for Hepatitis B, rotavirus, tetanus, pneumococcal, polio, and Haemophilus influenza. However, the COVID vaccine is only authorized to be given to infants ages 6 months and older.