MEDICAL MARIJUANA MIX-UP

In a quintessential exercise in bureaucratic hypocrisy, the University
of Washington Medical Center decided Thursday to deny a liver
transplant to Timothy Garon, a 56-year old musician suffering from
hepatitis C, because he was found to have used medically prescribed
marijuana to ease his abdominal pains.

While this case reflects the general absurdity of government-sponsored
anti-marijuana regulations, it is also a sad story about the
incohesiveness that has long been prevalent in the medical community.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, the office responsible for
overseeing the national organ transplant system, does not have its own
criteria for acceptable transplant candidates, but instead leaves it
up to the individual hospitals to decide who will be eligible to
receive a transplant.

The reasoning for denying transplants for medical marijuana patients
is inherently problematic in its rhetoric.

Dr. Robert Sade, the director of the Institute of Human Values in Health
Care at the Medical University of South Carolina, told the following to the
Associated Press: "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." However, this justification is undermined by
the fact that 13 states have opted to embrace a medicalized marijuana
program, in which the substances are legally available under state law
to patients with a doctor's prescription. Maybe this logic is just old
fashioned, but following a doctor's prescribed advice hardly seems
like evidence of an addictive personality. Do patients with a morphine
prescription have to go through this?

Though doctors agree that smoking marijuana is out of the question
after an organ transplant, as the drugs used to acclimate a patient's
body to their new organ can sometimes cause a fatal infection if mixed
with common molds found growing on marijuana or tobacco plants, there
is no evidence to suggest that smoking marijuana before the transplant
surgery would carry any negative side effects.

Dale Gieringer, the coordinator of the California chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, had the following to say to
the Associated Press: "Everyone agrees that marijuana is the least
habit-forming of the recreational drugs, including alcohol.

And unlike a lot of prescription medications, it's nontoxic to the
liver." If what he says is true, it is ludicrously unethical for
hospitals to deny transplants to users of legitimately prescribed
medical marijuana.