In our last discussion, we focused on ethics when it came to placebo pills. In part two of our discussion, we'll focus on another issue: Should patients using marijuana be denied organ transplants?
Now, I will not focus on marijuana much, as that can be turned into a whole other blog that many others have done before me. So, I'll leave it with the notion that marijuana does have many medicinal benefits.
The case here was a 56-year old man who was denied a place on the liver transplant list because he used medical marijuana. He died as a result. He lived in Washington, where marijuana is legal for medical purposes, and used it for nausea, abdominal pain, and to stimulate his appetite. But because marijuana is illegal under federal law, and is thus considered an illicit substance, those who use it are denied places on the transplant list.
In some ways, I can understand the purpose of this restriction. Marijuana is still illegal nationally, and so a use of it should be punished accordingly. If it were a more dangerous substance, such as cocaine or heroine, I would be completely in support of it. But this is medical marijuana... a substance prescribed by this man's physician to help ease his ailments. It's not like he was doing pot on his own time, without the knowledge or permission of his doctor. In this sense, it is the same as if someone denied a man a heart transplant because he was taking Lipitor.
Besides, marijuana, as far as I know, never killed anyone. The worst I've heard it do is cause schizophrenia-like symptoms in a person. But I've heard it has great benefits for cancer patients, beyond simply treating the side-effects of chemotherapy. It can actually cause the immune system to kill the cancer itself.
In this particular case, it's perfectly conceivable to think that the marijuana was keeping this man alive so that he might get a liver transplant. By denying him a place on the medical transplant list, they were denying him the right to live longer, essentially condemning him to die. He would not likely have died by continuing to use marijuana after his liver transplant.
But despite my resolution on this particular dilemma, it brings up some more interesting questions. For instance, should smokers be given a place on a lung transplant list while they are still smoking? After all, smoking is what likely caused, or at least aggravated, the damage of the lung in the first place, and it will damage the second lung just as easily. But in the same way, by denying a smoker a place on the transplant list, he/she is condemned to die. Or, on the broader scale, should we have the right to refuse medical treatment at all?
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Yes we should have the right to deny someone to be eligible to go on a transplant list.
sorry if this seems juvenile but i was watching Scrubs and on it a surgeon decided to take a patient off the list because he drank champaigne and needed a liver transplant. When confronted he said that it was his job to make sure the person who needs the organ and would use it properly without destroying it should get it. When someone is told they have lung cancer and they need to stop smoking in order to live they should or they should pay the consequences. The organ needs to go to the person who will use it the best.
Now the marijuana issue is on different circumstances that man had cannibus by legal means and they condemning him would mean killing him for following a Doctors orders. He should have had a chance to get the organ he needed.
Saint O Nothin' Says
PEACE
Rest in peace
yourfuneralguy
http://www.lowercostfuneral.com/rbrianblog
to do with transplant lists.
Drinking a glass of red wine every night is much, much better for you than binging on alcohol, and potentially even better than not drinking at all. So denying someone who simply drank champagne (especially if alcohol was not the cause of liver failure in the first place) is stupid, in my opinion. Combined with the fact that an entire liver is not needed in a liver transplant, and that case seems wrong.
But you still seem to be saying two different things. On one hand, you say that someone should be denied a place on the transplant list if they smoke or drink, but on the other hand, someone who does pot should be allowed on it, because they were following doctor's orders. But as I mentioned above, drinking can actually be more beneficial than not drinking.
~C
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Well take for the fact the man drinking was not doing with any medical consent he was doing it for the pleasure of drinking. He was told not to drink, smoke, or anything that can be considered harmful for the body yet he did it anyway. What im getting at here is that getting in line for a transplant is a gamble they have to find the right organ for you and if they give it to you, someone else doesn't get one... so if you screw up and drink, smoke, or do something else that is harmful (drugs, etc.) than you should be taken off the list so that someone who has not done anything wrong has a better chance. These are other peoples body parts it is a Doctor's obbligation to make sure it goes to the person who will take care of it the best
Saint O Nothin' Says
PEACE