As usual, the hearings were packed, with medical marijuana patients and activists flooding the chambers to add their testimony to the record.  One citizen petitioning her government for a redress of grievances was the Executive Director of the new Beverly Hills NORML 90210 (http://www.norml90210.org/become-a-member.php), Cheryl Shuman.  In sixty seconds of testimony, Cheryl recounts her own personal medical marijuana tragedy, one that has befallen many desperately ill patients who use cannabis — even legally — and require life-saving organ transplants:

Cheryl’s case is not unique.  All across America, hospitals are booting patients off of organ transplant lists because of their use of cannabis.  Being a legal user of cannabis for medicinal purposes in the now fourteen states that recognize that right is of no help; even legal medical marijuana patients are essentially given a death sentence by hospital and insurance bureaucracies for their use of a safe, non-toxic herbal remedy.

Timothy Garon was a Seattle musician who had contracted Hepatitis C.  Garon was on a waiting list for a life-saving liver transplant.  The state of Washington recognizes Hep C as a qualifying condition for the medical use of cannabis.  Garon’s physician, Dr. Brad Roter, authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate his nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite while he awaited.  Garon had become dangerously thin and malnourished and the cannabis therapy helped bring him back from the brink of death.

But unbeknown to Dr. Roter, hospital transplant programs have strict rules that forbid “substance abusers” from qualifying for organ transplants.  Seattle’s University of Washington Medical Center told Garon that if he ceased his marijuana use and tested clean for 60 days, he could have his liver transplant.  Another medical center specified six months of marijuana abstinence before they’d save his life with surgery.

Doctors had told Garon he had about two weeks to live and he died on May 1, 2008.  The cruelest irony is that cannabis is one of the few therapies Garon could have taken for pain and nausea that is not hepatoxic (liver-killing) and laden with a list of other nasty side effects.

In Hawaii, Kimberley Reyes suffered from cirrhosis and hepatitis and was given thirty days to live.  She applied for and received approval for a life-saving liver transplant, only to have the rug pulled out from under her three days later when her insurance company, Hawaii Medical Service Association, discovered cannabis in her system, which she had used to relieve feelings of nausea, disorientation and pain.  Ten days later she, too, was dead.

In Washington, Jonathan Simchen suffers from kidney failure. Doctors at Virginia Mason and University of Washington medical centers deny him a life-saving kidney transplant because of his participation in the Washington State medical marijuana program.  According to Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason, “any patient who smokes any product — tobacco, cloves, medical marijuana — would be precluded from receiving a transplant here.”

In Georgia, a man named Walter emailed me after reading these transplant stories:

My name is Walter and my kidney transplant was denied by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia due to the fact I smoke marijuana.

In January I went to the University of Minnesota/Fairview Transplant Center for an evaluation. In order to be completely honest with all the doctors I made them aware of the fact that I smoke marijuana and have for quite some time. I also made them aware that the use of marijuana has helped me with the decline of my appetite due to end stage of renal disease. With the exception of the hospital shrink, no one seemed to have a problem with it and even commented that my smoking had nothing to do with my kidney.

Blue Cross Blue Shield approved the evaluation but [after] having received the paperwork from Minnesota has declined my transplant, stating “Kidney transplantation has not been shown to be more beneficial than other alternative treatments for patients with ongoing substance abuse. Thus, I recommended denial of kidney transplantation” (Ronald Hunt MD – Medical Director).

Jim Klahr is a well-known medical marijuana activist here in Oregon who also suffers from cirrhosis and hepatitis C.  In an ironic twist, he sits on the state’s advisory committee on medical marijuana, yet hasn’t used his most effective medicine for his pain and nausea since 2004 because he’s terrified of losing his chance for a liver transplant.  “I’ve capitulated because basically I don’t have much of a choice,” says Klahr.  Paul Stanford of The Hemp & Cannabis Foundation, the state’s largest medical marijuana clinic, estimates at least 30 Oregonians who use medical weed have died in the past 10 years after hospitals denied them new organs.

We understand why hospitals have strict qualifying criteria for transplant candidates.  Transplant organs are in high demand and doctors want every recipient to have the best chance at survival possible.  Hospitals screen their transplant lists for “substance abusers” because it really doesn’t make much sense to put a new liver into an alcoholic who will just go out and drink that organ into cirrhosis and failure as well.  It’s foolhardy to give a new kidney to a heroin addict who would then possibly share needles and come down with another life-threatening disease.

But in the case of cannabis users, the concern for the chance of post-transplant survival is misplaced.  According to new research at the University of Michigan, cannabis use has no impact on the long-term survival rates of liver transplant recipients.  After studying 1,489 liver transplant patients, 155 of whom were cannabis users, over a span of eight years, researchers concluded, “Patients who did and did not use marijuana had similar survival rates. Current substance abuse policies do not seem to systematically expose marijuana users to additional risk of mortality.”

The cases of Cheryl Shuman and all these victims of a cruel and needless discrimination against desperately ill cannabis consumers illustrate why existing medical marijuana laws, while commendable, do not go far enough.  Cheryl Shuman, Tim Garon, Jim Klahr and others are all legal medical marijuana patients in their state, yet powerless under the law to force hospitals to keep them on the transplant lists.  This discrimination exists because cannabis is considered an “illicit drug of abuse” in the same category as heroin and LSD.  This is why cannabis must be removed from Schedule I, legalized for prescription by any doctor in any state, so that it may truly be treated like other medicines, including the prohibition on discrimination against a transplant patient for the use of his or her doctor’s prescriptions.

I spoke extensively last week with Willamette Weekly’s James Pipkin and on Monday with ABC’s Marcus Baram about NORML’s monitoring and gathering case examples from around the country where medical patients, notably medical marijuana patients, are being denied organ transplants. Marcus’ and James’ articles continue to cast more needed antiseptic light on this disturbing public health practice of official discrimination against otherwise lawful medical cannabis patients.

Heads up: Additionally, the Willamette Weekly has exposed the tragedy that confronts medical patients in Oregon — that no hospital in the state will perform organ transplants on patients who test positive for cannabis, even if they are in compliance with the state’s medical marijuana laws and are in the state’s medical marijuana patient registry.

Like the recent tragedy in Tallahassee regarding the tragic death of 23-year old Rachael Hoffman resulting from her being recruited as a ‘snitch’ for the local narcotic officers, the general public and maybe more importantly the general news beat media (AKA, mainstream media) have started to really bore down hard on the human tragedies that arise daily from cannabis prohibition–both in criminal enforcement of the laws, as well as how the prohibition trends upwards into important public institutions, such as in the delivery of medicine to sick, dying or sense-threatened medical patients.

Via our voices, collective consciousness and continued effective uses of employing empowering communication mediums like the Internet (i.e., webpages, podcasts, blogs, online videos and active online social networking), we can advance the long held goal and belief that an informed general public is the best path forward to ending cannabis prohibition may now finally be upon us.

I was heartened to see the Ventura Star editorialize against denying medical marijuana patients access to organ donor banks.

As the saying goes: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!

Let’s keep the collective pressure on the media, opinion and policy-makers to replace prohibition laws with viable, and common sense-based public policy alternatives.

Thanks to CA NORML’s Dale Gieringer, Ph.D and NLC member/2008 Aspen Legal Seminar faculty Doug Hiatt, Esq. for getting into the ABC news article!
ABC News
Medical Marijuana User Denied Organ Transplant
Jonathan Simchen, Who Has Kidney Failure, Is Latest Example of User Turned Down for Organ Transplants
By MARCUS BARAM

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4893948&page=1

May 20, 2008 —

When Jonathan Simchen was diagnosed with kidney failure last summer, he did just what the doctor ordered: He applied for a kidney transplant and took his prescribed medicine — medical marijuana.

The marijuana was meant to control his nausea.

Simchen, a 33-year-old diabetic who lives near Seattle, soon found out there was a Catch-22 rolled up in his legalized joints. He was turned down by two organ transplant programs because he uses medical marijuana.

“About two or three months after I got on dialysis, I went to Virginia Mason Hospital and they did a rigorous set of tests of my lungs, brain, circulatory system, a psychological evaluation,” Simchen told ABCNEWS.com.

“[They] took me off the list because they’re afraid of me being a future drug user,” said Simchen, who admits that he has used cocaine. But that was in the past and he even quit using medical marijuana at the hospital’s request.

When Simchen went to the University of Washington Medical Center, he says he was also turned down.

“They made it clear that if you had medical marijuana, they wouldn’t treat me. I just lost hope and got totally frustrated.”

Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason, would not discuss details of Simchon’s case because of medical privacy regulations, but said that “any patient who smokes any product — tobacco, cloves, medical marijuana — would be precluded from receiving a transplant here.”

The hospital, which performs 90 to 100 transplants a year, is concerned about medical safety in the evaluation of whether a patient is a suitable candidate for organ transfer, explained Mark.

“So few people are denied access to the waiting list. We’re not here to prevent them from getting on the list,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the University of Washington Medical Center also declined to discuss specifics of Simchon’s case, but said that medical marijuana use is only one of multiple factors, including behavioral concerns such as a history of substance abuse or dependency, examined by their transplant committee.

“We’ve never denied someone based solely on their use of medical marijuana,” said Clare Hagerty.

Simchon, whose lawyer is planning legal action against the transplant centers, could become a test case to challenge criteria of who is eligible to receive one of the life-giving organs.

Doug Hiatt, a criminal defense lawyer, has represented several clients including Timothy Garon, a Seattle musician who died earlier this month after being turned down for a liver transplant.

“Everyone else I’ve repped died on me,” said Hiatt. “This guy [Simchen] is in good enough shape that we can fight it out. & I realize that there is a shortage of organs and that doctors and hospitals have to do the best they can to take care of the organs they have, but it never dawned on me that they would discriminate against someone using marijuana under supervision, not as a street drug.”

There has never been a successful case brought in such cases, according to Dale Geringer, the California director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He could recall similar situations going back to 1997.

“The litigation takes months and years and these people have weeks or days,” he said.

Other transplant doctors and bioethicists, including some in states where medical marijuana is against the law, were surprised to hear about the refusals.

Vivian Tellis, the director of the transplant program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says that he would never turn somebody down because of a history of marijuana use or abuse. Because medical marijuana is not allowed in New York, most of those cases involve recreational use.

“There is no known contraindication between marijuana and the drugs you have to take after transplant,” Tellis said.

Tellis explains that an addictive personality is of concern “because if you’re high, you don’t take your [post-transplant regimen of] pills.”

Transplant centers tend to be very careful because they survive financially based on the number of successful transplants they do, explains Maxwell J. Mehlman, director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University.

“They use a screening process to avoid people who might be failures and they look at several factors from drug use to having a support system,” he said.

“It has actually been a source of bioethical controversy because it allows them to reject homeless people and people who live alone. In some cases, it’s a backdoor way of rationing based on social worth and lifestyles.”

Transplant centers insist that their utmost goal is to get organs to people who need them the most and ensuring patient safety.

The United Network of Organ Sharing, which includes 254 U.S. transplant centers, has no policy on the use of drugs or marijuana and leaves it up to their individual members to set reasonable guidelines.

Simchon, who is studying history and anthropology at a community college, is getting help from friends and strangers who are trying to get him into a transplant program.

“I’ve got hope that we can find a center that will put me on the list. I just wish it would happen in Washington, where I live.”

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