The Baby Will story
The Baby Will story
I just finished a Zoom interview here in New Zealand and the most important topic was the Baby Will story. If you haven't heard about it, here's the synopsis and where to find more info.
Executive summary
Will Savage-Reeves is a 4-month old boy in New Zealand who is in need of heart surgery to repair pulmonary valve stenosis. His parents Samantha (Sam) and Cole want him to have the surgery but they insist that the hospital use blood from dedicated donors that have not received the COVID-19 jabs. This blood is available but the doctors refuse to allow the parents to make this request, arguing that vaccinated blood is perfectly safe. There is also an effort by the hospital to have the guardianship of the child revoked and transferred to government authorities so that doctors can operate using vaccinated blood.
This is an important case and there are good arguments on both sides.
Introduction
Presumably, the hospital’s argument is that:
The quality of the match is critically important. Using a large donor pool allows the best match.
The standard procedure is to use blood from the blood bank for surgeries. If there were a safety signal from using vaccinated blood for transfusions, it would have surfaced by now.
If they agree to use unvaccinated blood, it could be interpreted as an admission that vaccinated blood is not safe and could lead to everyone requesting unvaccinated blood which would then create severe blood shortages for a dubious benefit.
I just got off the phone with Peter McCullough to get his take. He said he’d take the vaccinated blood because of the critical nature of the matching process. With donor blood, the match quality would not be as good because there is a smaller pool to draw from and it’s not just blood type that is matched. Nobody has quantified the risk of using vaccinated blood. He said if the risk were high, it would have been noticed by now (I’m not sure I agree with that; there is a lot of willful blindness for anything associated with the vaccine).
A key piece of the puzzle: I have not heard that the doctors have made the “match quality” argument so this could be a non-issue in this case. That’s important. It makes the parents’ argument more compelling since there is no downside to using unvaccinated blood.
In support of the parents’ concerns, the embalmers have reported the unusual blood clots only occur in vaccinated people and people who have had a transfusion, so the risk is not zero.
Also, there is at least one similar case of a baby receiving vaccinated blood who died from blood clots shortly after surgery (Baby Alex). The hospital erased all records of this patient! Whoa.
My personal opinion
Based on the evidence I’ve heard so far, my take is this:
There is a risk tradeoff here: neither option is the clear better choice for the patient.
In such cases, the patient should have the right to make this risk/benefit tradeoff after being fully informed by the doctors of the risks and benefits.
This is an urgent and important issue because a life is at stake.
Background
I’m in Queenstown, New Zealand right now. I just finished a 30 minute segment on the 12 hour Truth-A-Thon telethon sponsored by Counter Spin Media which they put together to draw attention to the baby Will case.
Learn more
James Roguski has created a dedicated website, savebabywill.com with more information and what you can do. It redirects to this substack article.
Note that just typing that URL (without the http://) into your browser will not work since it will default to https: and it will just hang since the website was not set up to support SSL URLs (an oversight I’ve told James about so he knows now).
The article contains email addresses of people you can send emails to and where you can make a donation to help the parents and support the lawsuit.
Updates
I have a call into Dr. Ryan Cole to get his take. I will update this article when I hear back from him.
I’ve also suggested to the people running the telethon to invite the hospital doctors on the program. It’s important for the public to hear both sides of the story. If the doctors decline, that is their choice. The best way to resolve differences is for both sides to engage in a discussion; something that seems impossible when it comes to the safety of the vaccine.
Summary
The doctors are apparently resisting agreeing to the parents’ demands because they are concerned that it would be a tacit admission that vaccinated blood is not safe. This could lead to everyone requesting unvaccinated blood and it would make the vaccine itself look unsafe. In short, granting the request could open the floodgates. This could be a very bad thing if transfusions are safe.
On the other hand, if the doctors continue to refuse to grant the parents’ very reasonable request, an innocent child’s life could be lost.
The parents cannot transfer to another hospital because they haven’t found a hospital willing to take the political heat of doing the surgery.
This is not a game. There is a real life at stake here.
If you agree with me that the parents should have the right to choose, please take an action in this case, either write an email or send a donation or both.
Thanks.
I am a long-time blood bank director. Directed donations are discouraged primarily for reason three in your list...they do not want a long list of people coming in and saying "I only want blood from these people". It is already hard enough to make this all work.
According to Roguski, they have recruited a large pool of potential donors. An infant surgery does not take all that much replacement blood, so it is entirely possible that there will be a match in their pool. Or not. The blood bank will be thrilled (I expect) to have that many donations because blood is always in short supply and only one or two units from the volunteers will likely be useful.
Matching is pretty arbitrary: Units are ABO/Rh typed and then pretty randomly selected (usually by expiration date) to be crossmatched. A major side crossmatch is all generally done which makes sure that there are no antibodies in the baby's blood that will clot the incoming transfusion. (A minor side crossmatch, seldom done but considered when volumes are equally small, checks the reverse.) Most matches get through first time. If not, one moves on. So if there are one or two good matches from the group they have assembled, that would be a win for the community and for them.
There is a further layer to put on this. Red cells (which is all they really need to transfuse) are just sacks of hemoglobin with a membrane. They do not contain organelles (like a nucleus) and I expect would not contain spike protein either...no place to attach since the red cell has just a simple unit membrane. So they could give packed, washed RBCs and accomplish all they wish from almost everyone's perspective. Why this is not discussed anywhere I find elusive. And this, of course, beggars the question as to whether someone vaccinated, let us say one year ago, would have any spike protein floating around in any case. Most would think not.
This seems like much ado that does not need to be there just to make a point. As I said, most blood banks will refuse directed donations not only because they likely do not match but also because they establish donation and use predicates that will cause most units to be wasted. If desired, they surely could use this as a major blood drive and "just happen" to use a unit from the drive if it happens to be compatible. Or they could just use washed, packed RBCs from the regular pool...likely will not be any more dangerous for Baby Will.
Happy to answer more questions if some folks have them.
Any updates on baby Will?