Hospital denies woman’s kidney transplant due to medical marijuana use [View all]

Toni Trujillo (pictured left), 40, came to California in 2010 to seek out specialized treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, having contracted a rare disorder in her youth that causes inflammation of the kidneys. She underwent her first transplant in 1991, and has been receiving regular dialysis treatments since 2007 in anticipation of a second.

Trujillo, however, was removed from that list in April after hospital staff learned that she’d been legally using medical marijuana since August 2010 at the recommendation of an independent doctor. She’s now participating in a six month battery of weekly substance abuse counseling sessions and random drug tests. If Trujillo stays clean for that whole time, she’ll be eligible to be re-added to the list — at the very bottom.

Cedars-Sinai also denied a liver transplant to 62-year-old Norman Smith last year after they discovered that his oncologist, who actually works for Cedars-Sinai, had recommended marijuana to help Smith cope with the side effects of chemotherapy and pain from an unrelated back surgery.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/11/hospital-denies-womans-kidney-transplant-due-to-medical-marijuana-use/