Gene Johnson at the AP reports on another problem with the state of Washington’s medical marijuana laws:
Timothy Garon’s face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant. His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days. But Garon’s been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons.
Garon was authorized by a doctor to use medical marijuana to counteract nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, but that was irrelevant to the transplant committee at the University of Washington Medical Center. Officials at the hospital weren’t specific about his case, but one surgeon quoted in the article hinted that transplants can be denied for medical marijuana patients on the belief that they will not be able to stop using it after the transplant (for medical reasons, many doctors tell transplant patients that they must abstain from using medical marijuana as their bodies accept the new organ). This is a common misunderstanding about medical marijuana patients and it shows that even medical professionals will often see them as addicts rather than people who find medical benefit from the drug’s effects. It’s another reminder that even here in liberal Washington State, we still have a long way to go before those who find that medical marijuana is beneficial have the kinds of protections they need.
Transplant committees are odd ducks. They (the committees in general, I’m not speaking solely of the UW here) also have a track record of turning down people with developmental disabilities who are perfectly good transplant candidates.
I think the real issue is the prioritization /// aka rationing of a rare resource.
Just because this fellow was able to obtain MJ does not mean that MJ is a recognized Rx anymore than Christian Science or sacrificing doves is accepted practice.
Here’s what I’d like to know: Did the doctor that gave him the Rx for MJ tell him that he was putting himself at risk for not getting a transplant organ?
You say it is a “common misunderstanding,” so that means the administrative complications, like being rejected for a transplant organ, ARE known.
The GOP is pro-life – except when it isn’t.
2 Hokey dokey, can you cite an instance where a transplant committee rejected a patient for being a member of Christian Science?
I ain’t gonna try and hold my breath…
At first glance organ transplants sound like a great idea and I still think they are, but the more one reads about the waiting list politics, the removal of organs from dying patients who are still breathing and have a heart beat but who are declared brain dead by the transplant surgical team (whom neither the patient or family have ever met) anxiously waiting in the next room, and talking relatives into premature removal of life support systems the more questions are raised. I no longer indicate on my driver’s license that I’m an organ donor but have instructed my family that once I’m clearly dead any and all parts of me are available if they would help someone.
@6: I’m alive solely because I got an experimental double organ transplant from UWMC. That was in 1994. If I was lucky it was supposed to extend my life five years. Here I am.
Since then I’ve befriended and counseled a number of people who need or are on a waiting list for transplants of one kind or another. Some are still alive; some aren’t. There’s no doubt that transplants save lives; there’s also no doubt that the system by which this rare resource is rationed is very, very flawed.
It’s not just the transplant committees (though that has plenty of minefields, some logical, some, like this case, not). It’s also the regional prioritization scheme, which means you have a much better chance of surviving your illness if you live in Jacksonville (short wait lists) than San Francisco (several years). You have to survive the insurance companies, which find it more profitable for you to die before your surgery rather than an expensive surgery and a lifetime of exorbitant immunosuppressant drugs. And, of course, there’s your life-threatening illness to deal with, which really doesn’t care that the human institutions controlling your fate are totally fucked up.
RCR, the institutions are flawed, but a lot of this gets eased if there’s more organs available. There’s not always time to find family members when someone dies unexpectedly; that’s the point of the drivers’ license organ donor indication. Please, please, you and everyone else reading this, check that box. It won’t matter any to you once you’re dead, but it might matter a great deal to someone else. Like me.
@2
Just because this fellow was able to obtain MJ does not mean that MJ is a recognized Rx anymore than Christian Science or sacrificing doves is accepted practice.
He was authorized by a doctor, Steve.
@3
Here’s what I’d like to know: Did the doctor that gave him the Rx for MJ tell him that he was putting himself at risk for not getting a transplant organ?
No. It’s certainly possible that his doctor should have, but I don’t think Goran should be punished for that mistake.
Hmmm … doctors playing God with people’s lives … aren’t most doctors Republicans? There seems to be a correlation here.
I so can’t wait till the day when they haul Lee away in a van to the clink. Move to Amsterdam you whiner, the 60’s are over.
@11 For people who go around saying the 60s are over, you and your fellow wingnuts sure obsess on the 60s a lot. Yes, they are over — for everyone except you guys. And isn’t it fascinating that former hippies are the core members of the neocon movement? Looks like some folks are having a hard time living with their past.
Hey there unemployed Rodent, I’ll have you know I wasn’t even alive then, so take your cheese and stuff it.
@11
I so can’t wait till the day when they haul Lee away in a van to the clink. Move to Amsterdam you whiner, the 60’s are over.
I wasn’t even born yet in the 60s. I don’t think I’m the one here who needs to be reminded that the 60s are over.
Graduated HS in 69. As a witness of the 60’s I can tell you Mark….they are over.
My take on the stoned hippy hatred. Authority didn’t take well to having someone respond to authoritarian clatrap with,”Who’s this clown?”
@2. I believe that all drugs have uses whether they are marijuana or heroin. Unfortunately, with our draconian drug laws, we cannot put these drugs to their proper uses. For instance, in England heroin is used for terminal cancer patients. It is a more concentrated and refined form of morphine. So our folks get crap, and their folks get the good stuff.
Our laws also keep chronic pain patients like me from getting adequate amounts of narcotics to live a decent life. No doctors dare to prescribe adequate amounts except pain specialists, and they are constantly under surveillance by the DEA.
I have been on both sides of the bed here. I spent 30 years as a nurse before I became a chronic pain patient. I have never used marijuana in my life, remarkable for somebody who actually lived through the ’60s. However, if I had to have chemo like my sister did, I would find a way to get marijuana for the nausea, whether legally or illegally.
Furthermore, the more we know about the placebo effect, etc. the more it seems that things like Christian Science can work. Lots of people have had good results with things like Reiki and acupuncture. Just because it isn’t allopathic medicine doesn’t mean it is invalid. The only things that ever helped my fibromyalgia are acupuncture and massage, which I now can’t afford. I also can’t afford to try the new drug they are touting for it because it would be Tier 4 on my Medicare D, and would cost me 80% of whatever exorbitant amount Big Pharma is charging.
Well spoken, Eileen. My wife is also fibromyalgic (among a host of other autoimmune diseases), and would benefit from legalized marijuana for pain control. How do I know this? When my wife and I were last in Seattle, she got the opportunity to have a….. ‘special’ brownie at my old rugby club’s Halloween party. She was pain-free for about a day and a half after ONE brownie.
But of course it’ll never be legalized, so as long as there are people around that are so completely unenlightened, who STILL actually believe that ‘Reefer Madness’ was real and accurate.
Umm – there is NO medical reason for medical marijuana (Marinol) to not be used and the reason for not using marijuana (smoked) is specious at best.
The supposed reasoning is that Aspergillus mold can be found in tobacco and marijuana and that the immunosuppressive drugs could make a person more vulnerable. Heck – they should not be allowed to garden either then….plenty of aspergillus and other fungal infections from the soil (Histococcus and Blastomycetes come to mind).
If that is the case – burning it would kill it and no one would be allowed to smoke tobacco either.
This is really a bunch of medical crock – there is no mold in marinol. So no smokers, no gardeners and no one who goes outside….this is total bull.
marrywanna is against the baby jesus.
people who smoke the demon weed should be throwed in jail or sent to good calvinist christian re-education camps.
especially if they make less that 300,000 dollars a
year.
Marijuana should be legal, regardless of whether it’s used by the poor people who are suffering from the side effects of cancer drugs or not. Time to end Prohibition.