Just read an article about a medical marajuana patient being denied a kidney transplant in part due to his marajuana use. Basically, this guy Jonathan Simchen “qualified for a kidney transplant in 2007, [but] the hospital removed him from the transplant list a few months later—when… he expressed an interest in trying medical marijuana.”
The article says that
It also mentions that there are (of course) conflicting opinions in the medical field about whether pot is addictive and about the dangers of aspergillus.
Now I know, and the article brings it up as well, that transplant organs are incredibly scarce and they have to have the highest standards on judging who is and is not on the transplant list. I also know that alcohol is perfectly legal, and that alcoholics are denied a place on the transplant list. However, I’d be curious to see how much alcohol one can consume before it becomes a factor in determining eligibility for the list, and compare that with how much pot one smokes. I can only assume that the standards are not so rigorous so as to include only people who abstain entirely from alcohol (although I guess I could be wrong-- I’d just be surprised). I could understand if it were a liver or kidney transplant, but something like a heart transplant seems to me like it wouldn’t be affected by periodic, moderated alcohol use.
I guess the issue really just comes down to availability of organs, and the necessity to exclude patients for any standards possible. It just seems to me like the underlying cause for this is the history of conservativism about pot. The country already makes provisions for pharmacists to deny drugs based on religious beliefs (one of my favorite jokes is about the christian scientist pharmacist). The intelligent design whackos are given creedence in (fortunately precious few) some school districts. The stem cell research is being blocked and marriage rights are denied to gays.
While this has a little more debate to it than just “this is wrong because my religion says so” because there aren’t conclusive medical studies about some of the medical issues raised, to my mind it’s just another brick in the wall of religious and social conservativism that’s surrounding the country. It ain’t Sharia Law, but it depresses the crap out of me.
This doesn’t have a ton of vitrol, but I thought it might end up needing to be in the pit eventually. If that’s not the case, it can wander over to GD.
This topic was a big article in our Sunday paper a few weeks ago. One of the factors in this decision is that smoking moldy pot can lead to fungal infections in immunocompromised patients. I know a guy that has had two major transplants, kidney and pancreas, and he smokes more weed than anybody I’ve ever known. He says that his doctor has brought it up to him, and once he told her that he doesn’t ever smoke moldy weed, that was the end of it. I think it’s a valid concern, but I don’t think someone should be allowed to die because they smoke pot. What’s wrong with educating the smokers and working with them to maintain their health?
Ah crap, shoulda known. However, we might see something more out of this case, because as the article points out, “Simchen is in a unique position: “He’s the only guy I’ve found who isn’t going to die while it takes years to litigate this,” says Douglas Hiatt, [Simchen’s] attorney.”
The guy is arguing someone else should die so he can live. He will not win this one. The rules were applied without fear or favor. All fair and square.
I find it hard to imagine a judge poking his nose into this.
Sure, but this guy is arguing that despite his intention to make himself a worse candidate, he should be treated as though he were an optimal one.
This isn’t about marijuana, it’s not about whether marijuana is teh ayvil or not- it’s about the fact that this individual is affirmatively decreasing his statistical likelihood of tolerating the transplant well, and is thus moving himself down the list. Unhappy with the raw numbers, he is attempting to wrap himself in an issue so that he can have his brownie and eat it too.
Transplants aren’t about who is more deserving. They’re about who is most likely to thrive post-transplant. This guy is less likely to do the latter and thus wants you to think that it’s about the former. It isn’t.
I guess I just don’t see that other than the mold issue, which not even all doctors agree is an issue, is how pot affects how a patient will thrive post-transplant. Like I said above, are only teetotalers allowed on the transplant list? It seems to me that occasional alcohol is just as if not more so damaging than occasional pot use. If it’s the only issue that is affecting his placement on the list it seems a bit weak to me.
Are people who smoke pot not eligible to donate? Is there enough time between when an organ is harvested and transplanted to test for the presence of aspergillus?
He did. At the time, and for some years after it was stated repeatedly by him (or his publicists) that he was clean and sober and all that.
Since then, it has been shown that he has subsequently relapsed to smoking marijuana.
I’ve a few patients who had kidney transplants, drank to excess and used tobacco and other drugs and subsequently had their transplanted kidney fail. Most annoying.
Yeah, but the only response to alternate methods of pot consumption was that it may indicate addictive behavior. And I still have no idea how much alcohol consumption still makes a candidate viable for an organ transplant. I understand that addicts are not viable, but what’s an addict? 1 drink a day? 2 drinks a week, but on the same night?
People with addictive personalities might be more likely to be addicted to things like alcohol or pot (which as far as I know hasn’t been shown to have physically addicting properties), but to exclude someone from transplant because they are taking a prescribed drug that might possibly indicate addictive behavior seems like bullshit.
I agree with Qadgop’s statement in the other thread about how the medical MJ program is abused in CA. But the guy in the article I linked to is using pot to combat nausea that is a result of his dialysis. I could get on board with saying that smoking is bad for you, but until there are studies indicating that any ingestion of pot is damaging to the organs being transplanted, I still see this as pretty fucking puritannical.
Except that the man in the linked article is a pot smoker, not a THC pill popper, so smoking seems to be the issue.
Of course there are going to be lame transplant guidelines when it comes to marijuana- just like a number of lame laws currently on the books. I sympathize with your feelings, I really do- I am a former junkie and I do NOT believe that marijuana is addictive. However, I also have very strong feelings about organ transplantation, and I agree 100% that with a scarcity of organs, any contraindication should put a patient low on the list, if at all.
So shouldn’t he get the choice to switch to a vaporizer or some other form of ingestion? Live with nausea for the rest of your life, or live without a kidney. Even though he could fix both problems. I agree that organs need to be treated like the precious resource they are, but it seems like this guy is out of options.
It’s not about who’s a better person- it’s about who’s a safer bet to survive.
And sometimes your horse don’t win.
And this guy is objectively a worse candidate.
A guy who might maybe be inclined to smoke weed and just needs the right intervention or alternative program is an objectively worse candidate than someone who has never touched the stuff.
Why should an alternative-to-addiction program be underwritten when it’s not needed?
Because it’s a prescribed drug that hasn’t been shown to have any side effects in terms of how likely he’ll be to survive. My point is that if there were an anti-nausea drug that wasn’t weed and had the same lack of side effects, the committee wouldn’t think twice about how it affects his qualification for the list. But since it’s the big scary mareajewwanna, the guy’s an addict and isn’t as likely to survive.
And I’m still wondering if anyone has any information about alcohol and eligibility for transplant lists.
That was the guy in the other thread. The guy I was talking about in this article AFAI could tell didn’t do anything on his own to cause his illnesses. In fact, it says that when he was a kid, doctors “accidentally punctured his large intestine while attempting a biopsy on his kidney to determine why he was urinating blood.”
