(Image: Nine)
(Image: Nine)

Moments before going live on Nine’s Today program, a doctor found out he was featuring in a segment titled “No jab, no heart” alongside a woman who claims she was denied a heart transplant because of COVID-19 vaccination “mandates”.

The February 13 episode of Today, which attracted some 191,000 viewers according to TV ratings information, featured a segment in which host Karl Stefanovic introduced aggrieved patient Vicki Derderian as ineligible for a heart transplant due to her unvaccinated COVID-19 status.

“What Vicki needs is a heart transplant but she can’t get her name on the list because of COVID vaccine mandates, even though she has a legal exemption from the jab,” Stefanovic told viewers. 

Derderian said she did her research and decided not to get a COVID vaccination to “minimise risk”, adding that she is otherwise “ready to be on the heart transplant list”. She claimed that Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital had a stance of “no jab, no heart” that was undermining the autonomy of doctors and patients. 

“Patients like myself, we‘re being pushed into a corner and coerced to take something that goes against what we believe in,” she said. 

Crikey understands that Dr Nick Coatsworth, who Today calls its “regular contributing medico”, was asked to appear on the show that morning but only told that he would be in conversation with a patient as the show was about to go to air.

He fielded claims from Derderian (and Stefanovic), explaining the medical protocols and decision-making behind the Alfred Hospital transplant team’s decision to deny Derderian a new heart.

“The biggest risk to you is when we hit your immune system like that, if you get COVID-19 without having the vaccine, there’s a really significant risk that you’ll die and that organ will die with you,” Coatsworth said.

Stefanovic asked him whether this indicated doctors would no longer treat unvaccinated patients as a matter of policy, to which Coatsworth explained this was a medical decision, not a matter of mandates. 

Nine’s director of morning television, Steven Burling, told Crikey that at no point did Today spread medical misinformation in regard to the transplant segment, reiterating that Derderian’s “personal decision” to not get a COVID-19 vaccination did not change the fact that she required surgery to prolong her life.

“The vast majority of Australians would disagree with her anti-vax stance, but regardless in this post-pandemic world these Australians would also probably say, what does it now matter if she is unvaccinated if she requires this surgery?!” Burling wrote in an email to Crikey.

The interview was picked up by The Daily Telegraph, News Corp’s news.com.au site and right-wing publication Breitbart News Network, all of which focused on vaccine mandates as the reason for Derderian’s situation. 

The Transplantation Society of Australia and New Zealand’s clinical guidelines for organ transplantation makes clear what the “major exclusion criteria” that would pose an “unacceptably high mortality risk” for potential recipients. 

The guidelines, published in October 2022, make clear many factors can exclude a person from receiving a transplant including acute medical conditions, complicated diabetes and “non-compliance with recommended pre-transplantation vaccinations”.

In line with Coatsworth, Prince Charles Hospital transplant cardiologist Dr Scott McKenzie said that none of this would matter if “heart transplants grew on trees”, but given approximately 120 hearts are available each year for a pool of thousands, selection criteria is critical. 

“You’d rather they don’t die because it’s a waste of an organ,” McKenzie told Crikey. 

McKenzie said doctors must consider diseases that a patient already has (unrelated to their heart) that could increase the chance of post-transplant death, diseases they could get post-transplant in an immunosuppressed state (necessitating vaccination), and anything likely to lead them to reject the organ. 

“The benchmark is that a patient who is going to receive an organ needs to be alive in 10 years,” he said. “The immune system is essentially turned off post-transplant, so if there’s a high risk of infection, there’s a high chance of dying.”

The segment follows a Today interview the week before where Stefanovic declared he’d had enough of vaccines and was opting out of a fifth COVID-19 booster shot. He dismissed updated advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group (ATAGI) on eligibility criteria, questioned the efficacy of the vaccine, and hyped up side effects, citing unverified internet reports on “fit and healthy people just dropping down with health issues”, including heart issues.

Crikey analysis of dozens of Australian major anti-vaccine groups found the February 8 interview kicked off online coverage of this issue. Discussion of Derderian’s case began circulating after the February 15 interview. Since then, the case has become a popular cause among both Australian and international anti-vaccine groups.

In an email to Crikey, a spokesperson for Alfred Health said the hospital’s “expert team” treats patients based on clinical evidence. They would not comment on the Today show: “As this matter is currently being heard by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), we are unable to comment further at this time.”