The patient denied liver transplant due to medical marijuana
use died Thursday at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center,
his lawyer said.
Timothy Garon’s death comes a week after a University Medical
Center committee had for
the second time denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The committee
previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he
completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.
"When a doctor authorizes medical marijuana, it's like
a prescription. Telling a dying guy in his shape to wait 60 days is insulting
and sickening in my opinion,” Garon’s lawyer, Douglas Hiatt said, according to
the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Harboview
Medical Center
previously turned him down, without any reason, Hiatt added.
“I’m not angry, I’m not mad, I’m just confused,” Garon, the
lead singer for Nearly Dan, a Steely Dan cover-band, told the Associated Press
last week, a few minutes after the hospital committee took the decision. He was
suffering from hepatitis C.
Doctors say drug use and alcohol abuse are two factors they
consider in deciding whether a patient can be enlisted for a transplant or not.
The rule also applies to those who use medical marijuana to ease their pain
under a doctor's supervision.
“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,” Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Institute Values in
Health Care at the Medical University of South Carolina, said, according to the
AP.
“The concern is that patients who have been using it will
not be able to stop,” Dr. Jorge Reyes, a liver transplant surgeon at the UW
Medical Center, said.
The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which
supervises the nation’s transplant system, allows hospitals to take decisions
on their own, not interfering in their criteria for transplant candidates.
Under federal law, marijuana is illegal. Some hospitals
automatically reject people who use “illicit substances” even if the states
allow it. Others give patients a chance to reapply for a transplant
if they stay clean for six months.
Dr. Brad Roter, who prescribed marijuana to Garon, in order to alleviate
nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he had no idea his prescription
would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.
According to pro-marijuana groups, there were several cases
of such patients who were denied transplant because they used medical
marijuana. Moreover, they cited at least two patient deaths in Oregon, California,
since the mid-to-late ‘90s, when states began adopting medical marijuana laws.
