COVID-19: Can doctors refuse unvaccinated patients? Reports suggest this is already happening

"Rewriting medical ethics," unvaccinated Americans and Canadians claim they've been denied medical care, including organ transplants.

Turning away an unvaccinated customer from a business? Some argue that’s fair.

But turning away an unvaccinated patient looking for medical care? Bad, bad idea, says a Toronto bioethicist.

“I think it sets, from an ethical point of view, a terrible precedent,” said Kerry Bowman, an assistant professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

“If physicians are considering not doing it because they think the patient is making a bad decision, we’re rewriting medical ethics and human rights … We cannot be in a position where healthcare workers become judgmental of their patients.”

But this has already become a reality for American patients.

Some unvaccinated individuals report being denied organ transplant surgeries –  though some doctors say this is because a patient’s chance of death is higher post-op, if they happen to contract COVID-19.

Other physicians however, are fearful for their own safety, and that of staff and patients — which is something Bowman says is “a little more understandable, but still not great.”

“These are the types of risks that come with being a healthcare worker,” said Bowman. “If you want no risks, you’d go work in a mall or something I guess.”