MEDICAL MARIJUANA USE COMPLICATES LIVER TRANSPLANTS

Marijuana Use By Hepatitis C Patients Could Be Harmful

It is interesting to see two articles the same day about marijuana.
Columnist Neal Peirce wonders why President Obama has backed away
from the advocacy of pro-marijuana candidate Obama ["Obama's puzzling
silence on pot," Opinion, Dec. 18] and LA Times reporter Anna Gorman
highlights the plight of a hepatitis C patient who was rejected for a
liver transplant as his condition advanced into liver cancer.
["Medical marijuana adds crimp to liver transplant eligibility,"
seattletimes.com, Dec. 17.] The rejection was based on his use of
approved medical marijuana.

It might help everyone to know that evidence seems to show that
hepatitis C patients progress three to four times as rapidly to
cirrhosis, and then to liver cancer, when smoking marijuana. This is
a deadly trap set by the use of medical or nonmedical marijuana for
chronic pain of hepatitis C.

- - Gerald N. Yorioka, M.D., Mill Creek