— https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/05/uchealth-transplant-unvaccinated
If you can grok why you wouldn't give a lung transplant to a person still smoking or a liver transplant to someone who is still a heavy drinker, you should be able to understand why some health systems have started to require the coronavirus vaccine to be on their organ transplant lists. Take a step back and remove the emotion of the moment for a second.
In any case even in regards to vaccine requirements such policies aren't unique to the coronavirus vaccine. Organ transplant recipients are required to be vaccinated against several diseases for similar reasons invoked in this case.
A number of these cases have involved kidney transplants to boot, which have very long waiting lists, and which have seen demand skyrocket as a result of the effects of the coronavirus and treatment of COVID.
It's a totally acceptable, even expected, measure. Given the nature of how Covid attacks the body and the scarcity of donated organs, it makes sense to prioritize recipients with lower risk factors. Vaccination is easy, safe and effective. If somebody voluntarily chooses against it, they've chosen to run the risk of a deadly disease that targets damage to major organs in immune-compromised people. Why should they expect to receive the gift of an organ that already most likely came at the loss of somebody else's life?
