Legal medical marijuana use bars transplant
P-I STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES
The death this week of a musician who was three times denied a liver transplant highlights a new ethical concern: When dying patients need a transplant, should it be held against them if they've used marijuana with a doctor's blessing?
Timothy Garon, 56, died Thursday at Bailey-Boushay House. He was the lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover-band.
His lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, said that although no one told him why Garon was turned down for a transplant, he suspects it was because he used marijuana with medical approval, as allowed under state law, to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C.
Garon died a week after a University of Washington Medical Center committee had for the second time denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. Harborview Medical Center previously turned him down. No reasons were given for the denials, Hiatt said.
Harborview said he would be considered if he avoided pot for six months, and the UW Medical Center offered to reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug treatment program, but doctors said his liver disease was too advanced for him to last that long, Hiatt said. The university hospital committee agreed to reconsider anyway, then denied him again.
"When a doctor authorizes medical marijuana, it's like a prescription," Hiatt said. "Telling a dying guy in his shape to wait 60 days is insulting and sickening in my opinion." (please read)
About Me
- freethe420
- THEREIN lies much of the cruelty of marijuana, especially in its attack upon youth. The young, immature brain is a thing of impulses, upon which the “unknown quantity” of the drug acts as an almost overpowering stimulant. No one can predict what may happen after the smoking of the weed. I am reminded of a Los Angeles case in which a boy of seventeen killed a policeman.
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