GIFT Act Aims to Block Vaccination Status from Organ Transplant Decisions

The "Guaranteeing Individual Fairness in Transplants Act of 2025," or GIFT Act, proposes a specific change to how hospitals select organ transplant recipients. It seeks to amend the Social Security Act to explicitly prohibit hospitals—including critical access and rural emergency facilities—from considering a patient's vaccination status when making decisions about who receives an organ.

Under Section 2 of the bill, the core directive is straightforward: a hospital cannot factor whether a potential recipient has or hasn't received any vaccination into their evaluation for an organ transplant. This means that a patient's immunization record, regardless of the specific vaccine, would be off-limits as a consideration in the allocation process. The practical effect is removing one potential data point that medical teams might currently use to assess a candidate's overall health profile and, crucially, their potential risks after receiving a transplant. Transplant recipients require immunosuppression to prevent organ rejection, making them highly vulnerable to infections; vaccinations are often considered part of mitigating that risk. This bill mandates that vaccination status, specifically, cannot be part of that risk assessment calculus, aiming to ensure that transplant decisions are not influenced by an individual's vaccination choices.