Free Dating Site    

Medical marijuana user who was denied liver transplant dies
Authorized medical marijuana user dies after being denied liver transplant in Seattle
Staff
AP News
May 02, 2008 13:05 EST

A man who was denied a liver transplant largely because he used marijuana with medical approval to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C has died.

Timothy Garon, 56, died Thursday at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center, said his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.

The case highlights an ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant: whether using dope with a doctor's blessing should be held against a dying patient in need of a transplant.
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation's transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.

At some, people who use "illicit substances" — including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana is illegal under federal law.

Dr. Brad Roter, who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.
Garon told The Associated Press last week he believed he contracted hepatitis C by sharing needles with "speed freaks" as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot was been the only drug he used.
(This version corrects he was denied transplant largely because he used marijuana, and that doctor did not give a reason for denial.)
Source: AP News

Marijuana is safer than tea and coffee.

Nothing consumed via smoke is safe.

No actually its not. Nothing consumed via smoke is safe. Unless you're going to tell me you mostly consume tea or coffee via smoking it your outa luck.

This guy smoked pot and he died because he smoked pot....

The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.

Man dies as result of Medical Marijuana Use..... This guy smoked pot and he died because he smoked pot....

Marijuana is safer than tea and coffee.

This is true of marijuana also when smoked. Smoking cigarettes typically takes many years to cause chronic lung disease. Smoking marijuana regularly can do this in as little as two years! If the person agrees to stop smoking BOTH, I don't see a problem.

I SUSPECT THERE IS MORE TO THE STORY THAN WAS REPORTED.

To the doctor and her opinion. I would really like you to wear someone's shoes, who is in chronic pain, cannot digest food for throwing up, and see how it affects your quality of life. Or your child or loved one. I pity the patients in your care, where you judge their lives based on your level of academic expertise.

But, I forgot, you are entitled to your opinion, the only difference between us, is that you have the authority to relieve someone's pain, and I don't.

I agree to that, and doctors recommend stopping all alcohol and tobacco usage.
I feel that diet plays a part as well. Also, the patient must cease all fatty foods, high salt intake, and exercise as much as they are able. Then get in touch with their creator, and make peace. Then a transplant should be made available, but no one would qualify.

The headline is intentionally misleading. In actual fact he died of liver failure, death likely hastened by being denied a transplant. The first rule of medicine is "Do No Harm." Apparently, someone broke it. Time for a medical ethics review.

It further serves law enforcement as a tool to suppress minorities and the working poor.

To the doctor and her opinion. I would really like you to wear someone's shoes, who is in chronic pain, cannot digest food for throwing up, and see how it affects your quality of life. Or your child or loved one. I pity the patients in your care, where you judge their lives based on your level of academic expertise. Maybe you need to have a desease and feel their pain, to generate some compassion. He left a family, I presume, siblings, parents, spouse, maybe. I'm sure your "qualified opinion" is helping them with thier loss. You don't even know that patients history. And I';m sure his doctor has reasons for prescribing it. And ingesting the drug, doesn't give the same relief. Talk to oncologists and maybe get their oponion on the subject. Just because you are a physician, doesn't make you God!
But, I forgot, you are entitled to your opinion, the only difference between us, is that you have the authority to relieve someone's pain, and I don't.

Is medical-marijuana use reason to deny someone an organ transplant?

By Seattle Times staff and The Associated Press
The death this week of a musician who said he was denied a liver transplant because of his medical-marijuana use has highlighted a new ethical consideration: Should pot use with a doctor's blessing be held against a dying patient who needs an organ transplant?

Timothy Garon, 56, used marijuana to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C. Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite — a use authorized under a Washington state law approved by voters in 1998 — said he had not known it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

Garon died Thursday, one week after he said he learned from his doctor that a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver-transplant list.

"He said I'm going to die, with such conviction," Garon said then. "I'm not angry, I'm not mad, I'm just confused."

His death at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive-care nursing center, was confirmed Friday by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Garon, lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover band, believed he contracted hepatitis by sharing needles with "speed freaks" as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot had been the only drug he'd used. In December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.

The UW Medical Center declined to talk about Garon's case specifically, but released a statement saying: "Although medical marijuana may be an issue in rare cases, it is never the sole determinant in arriving at medical decisions about candidates for organ transplants, and whether a patient is listed. Patients with a reasonable chance of survival and a good outcome, given a variety of factors, are listed."

The statement also noted that there are about 98,000 patients waiting for organs in the United States and only 6,000 donors available.

Hiatt said Friday that UW was being "completely disingenuous" about the transplant denial: "They denied him because of medical-marijuana use," he said. "They have a shortage of organs, and they're using moral judgments to decide who gets one."

Garon had been in the hospice for two months. His doctor at Harborview Medical Center told him she wouldn't put in his paperwork for transplant consideration at UW until he avoided pot for six months, Hiatt said. The university soon offered to reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug-treatment program, but his liver disease was too advanced by then for him to last that long, doctors told him. The university-hospital committee agreed to reconsider its decision, then denied him again.

Because of the scarcity of donated organs, transplant committees such as the one at the UW Medical Center have tough standards for deciding who should get them. Does a candidate have other serious health problems? Will he or she religiously take anti-rejection medicines? Is there good family support? Is the candidate likely to drink or do drugs? And what about medical marijuana authorized by a doctor?

"Most transplant centers struggle with issues of how to deal with people who are known to use marijuana, whether or not it's with a doctor's prescription," said Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina. "Marijuana, unlike alcohol, has no direct effect on the liver. It is, however, a concern ... in that it's a potential indicator of an addictive personality."

Garon's girlfriend, Leisa Bueno, of Olympia, said Garon had not used other drugs or alcohol since he was diagnosed with hepatitis in 2001.

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation's transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates. At some, people who use "illicit substances" — including medical marijuana, even in states that allow it — are rejected automatically.

At others, such as the UCLA Medical Center, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months. Marijuana use is illegal under federal law.

Typically, doctors don't realize that authorizing marijuana use for nausea or other disease complications may jeopardize their patient's chance for a transplant, said Peggy Stewart, a clinical social worker on the liver-transplant team at UCLA who has researched the issue.

"There needs to be some kind of national eligibility criteria so that everyone will know what the rules are," Stewart said.

The patients "are trusting their physician to do the right thing. The physician prescribes marijuana, they take the marijuana, and they are shocked that this is now the end result."

No one tracks how many patients are denied transplants over medical-marijuana use. Pro-marijuana groups have cited a handful of cases, including at least two patient deaths, in Oregon and California, since the mid- to late 1990s, when states began adopting medical-marijuana laws.

Another Seattle-area patient, Jonathan Simchen, 33, of Fife, Pierce County, said he was rejected as a kidney-transplant candidate at Virginia Mason and told by the UW that he will not be listed until he abstains from pot for six months.

Simchen said he uses marijuana to control his blood pressure and to stimulate his appetite, which is disrupted by dialysis.

Many doctors agree that using marijuana — smoking it, especially — is out of the question post-transplant. The drugs patients take to help their bodies accept a new organ increase the risk of aspergillosis, a frequently fatal infection caused by a common mold found in marijuana and tobacco.

Seattle Times staff reporter Carol M. Ostrom contributed to this report.