Cannabis News Students for Sensible Drug Policy
  Wash. State MMJ User Dies Without Transplant
Posted by CN Staff on March 02, 2011 at 08:21:30 PT
By The Associated Press 
Source: Associated Press  

medical Seattle, WA -- A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

The case has highlighted a new ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant, especially in the dozen states that have medical marijuana laws: When dying patients need a transplant, should it be held against them if they've used pot with a doctor's blessing?

Garon died a week after his doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list because of his use of marijuana, although it was authorized under Washington state law.

"He said I'm going to die with such conviction," Garon told an AP reporter at the time. "I'm not angry, I'm not mad, I'm just confused."

Garon believes he contracted hepatitis C by sharing needles with "speed freaks" as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot has been the only drug he's used. In December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.

He had been in the hospice for two months and previously was rejected for a transplant at Swedish Medical Center for the same reason he later got from the university hospital.

Swedish said he would be considered if he avoided pot for six months and the university hospital offered to reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug treatment program, but doctors said his liver disease was too advanced for him to last that long. The university hospital committee agreed to reconsider anyway, then denied him again.

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Published: March 1, 2011
Copyright: 2011 The Associated Press

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Comment #16 posted by FoM on March 07, 2011 at 14:00:36 PT
Off Topic But Not Really
Transplant Patients a Target of Arizona Budget Cuts

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/06/us-arizona-transplants-idUSTRE7242GN20110306

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #15 posted by BGreen on March 03, 2011 at 23:10:23 PT
I've Had Enough, Too!
I'm going to keep fighting until this insanity stops.

The Reverend Bud Green

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #14 posted by FoM on March 03, 2011 at 18:06:29 PT
Had Enough
You know I'm with you.

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Comment #13 posted by Had Enough on March 03, 2011 at 16:42:22 PT
Drug Wars
Drug Wars

This drug war killed my bride of 55 years of age. We spent around 32 yrs together. She got her Hep C from a blood transfusion around 1989. We did not participate in any risky activities whatsoever, just so we could avoid these problems. No multiple sex partners, no needles stuck in ourselves, avoided all types of lifestyles that promote that stuff. But she ended up with a death sentence regardless of our efforts.

After she was diagnosed with that, I jumped through hoop after hoop just to keep some kind of health insurance policy for her, only to be eventually shut out. They would not put her on a transplant list from the get go…not wealthy enough or connected enough, I guess.

You just gotta love the ‘loving arms of the insurance companies’

The best health care system in the world, only if you can afford it.

Look at all the other innocent victims of no knock raids, wrong address raids. Innocent Infants being shot dead in airplanes by military air forces over South America. Rachel Hoffman's needless murder…on and on and on…

Look at the constitutional search and seizure laws being trampled on.

Look at the creeps on both sides of the law capitalizing on these drug wars.

It is time to end this crap, and I mean NOW!!!

I’ve had enough…and I’m sure I do not stand alone…

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #12 posted by herbdoc215 on March 03, 2011 at 11:05:55 PT
I also want to add that we all should
Be thanking our deities for men like Douglas Hiatt as I know he gave his heart and soul trying to help Tim for years now. If it wasn't for Douglas I wouldn't be writing this now or would anybody here ever have heard from me again as he alone with Dr. Sunil Aggarwal pulled me from the belly of hell and took me in like family out of the goodness of their hearts, he is definitely the net underneath me that has allowed me to go on fighting...if anybody here ever wants to donate any money to this cause, him and his Sensible Washington group are the people I would recommend as he is fighting this to end for all us patients and I have watched him do it for years on a shoestring and a prayer! Peace, Steve Tuck

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Comment #11 posted by FoM on March 03, 2011 at 08:39:51 PT
Just Another Thought
It takes a lot to get me upset anymore but this man losing his life over medical marijuana gets me very angry.

Our friend had smoked a little marijuana the day before he received the transplant. They called him in the middle of the night to get to the hospital which is 100 miles away as fast as he could. At this point he would have died very soon if he hadn't received the donor liver. So while the family was rushing him to the hospital he spent a good deal of time worrying that they would test him and say no but surgery was set up and ready to go so they didn't test him.

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Comment #10 posted by Garry Minor on March 03, 2011 at 05:24:45 PT
Modern Hippocratic oath
Or are these people hypocrites?

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

It's pretty clear to me!

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Comment #9 posted by Sinsemilla Jones on March 03, 2011 at 04:17:49 PT
A very good friend of mine died of liver failure.
I tell myself he was denied a transplant because of his heart problems, high blood pressure, and/or diabetes. I tell myself that he probably wouldn't have survived the surgery, anyway. But I know it was probably the THC in his blood that was used by his "health care providers" to deny him a new liver. He was just 48.

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Comment #8 posted by DrDunkleosteus on March 02, 2011 at 21:52:14 PT:

This
is absolutely horrible. This cannot be allowed to continue. I'm speachless.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #7 posted by Vincent on March 02, 2011 at 20:45:49 PT:

Prohibitionists
Hello everybody at Cannabis News. After reading this digusting article, I'm going to make this comment short...Prohibitionists are animals! Case closed.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #6 posted by BGreen on March 02, 2011 at 14:45:06 PT
Murderers!
What else can I say?

The Reverend Bud Green

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #5 posted by dongenero on March 02, 2011 at 12:32:16 PT
There it is, America. Talk about death panels?
America under the influence of conservative culture war.

Isn't it a great delusion though? Just like Ozzy and Harriet on tv in the 1950's. How perfect a vision.

Never mind the people we leave for dead. Or, the outright atrocities committed in the name of that stupid Reaganesque myth.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #4 posted by truth420 on March 02, 2011 at 11:15:31 PT
This makes no sense
What would the harm have been in going ahead with the transplant? They obviously weren't going to give his diseased liver to someone else. What the pharmaceutical controlled medical industry is saying is that because this patient chose to use a natural medicine that they can't profit from, he didn't deserve to live.

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Comment #3 posted by FoM on March 02, 2011 at 09:28:42 PT
herbdoc215
We have a very long time close friend who was told if he tests positive for marijuana they would bump him from the transplant list. Marijuana was the only thing keeping him from being nauseated all the time. He had the liver transplant and is doing ok after quite a few years since his transplant except he had a stroke on top of it. He was so scared and that really upset us.

Now the doctors say keep on doing whatever you are doing. They don't test him anymore.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #2 posted by herbdoc215 on March 02, 2011 at 09:15:09 PT
What is next on their list for cannabis patients
We can't drive, we can't raise or be around children, we can't live in govt housing, we can't own a gun or be around one, we can't defend ourselves if robbed, we can't even tell the truth in federal or most state courts about why we use cannabis, we can't have bank accounts, AND now they want the ability to kill us at will arbitrarily because there isn't one iota of evidence that cannabis causes/has caused one case of rejection in the ENTIRE world. I have a couple of other friends right now going through very simular circumstances and a few patients/friends whom the government has already killed by playing this same game with them! I ask you all how much longer are we going to let them treat us like this and not stand up as one and throw off the chains of oppression! Steve Tuck

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Comment #1 posted by Tim on March 02, 2011 at 08:52:13 PT:

What?
I didn't know that using marijuana would have an effect on one's surgery. That IS confusing. I think the doctor knew what he was doing with his recommendations, especially with his own patient. What's up with the "six months" and the "60-day drug treatment program"? It only takes 30 days or so to get marijuana out of your body anyway, right? Rest in peace Timothy...

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