California Organ Donation: Transplants Between HIV-Positive People Now Legal

With a piece of emergency legislation, California lawmakers legalized organ donations between HIV-positive people. The change in California law became official Friday when Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill, and the legislation went into effect immediately. As Fox News reports, the change to California’s organ donation rules was rushed in order to allow a man with HIV to donate part of his liver to his HIV-positive husband before it’s too late for surgery.

According to the report, the organ donation procedure will have to take place within weeks. Any later, and the surgery will be too dangerous for the ailing liver recipient.

The U.S. federal government already authorized organ transplants between HIV-infected individuals in a recent move. However, organ transplants of this nature remained illegal in California and over a dozen other states.

Prior to the recent federal ruling, HIV-positive individuals couldn’t donate organs out of fear of the spread of the ravaging disease.

Advancements in testing and HIV treatment have reduced concerns from the medical community regarding donated tissue. Under the new California organ donation law, HIV-positive transplant patients can now opt to receive organs from HIV-infected donors, be they living or deceased. This change to the California organ donation law could cut the wait time for organ donation in half for patients who are willing to accept an HIV-infected organ.

In the United States, only four hospitals are authorized to perform transplants using HIV-infected organs. Fortunately for the man and his husband, one of those hospitals is the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. While the names of the patient and his donor have not been released, California organ transplant surgeon Dr. Peter Stock says he hopes to be able to perform the desperately-needed organ transplant operations on the pair.

He will, however, need time for preparation and to do necessary tests on both the organ donor and recipient.

Reportedly, the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center alone has 65 additional patients that are both HIV-positive and waiting for organ transplants. Among those patients is another man who desperately needs a liver donation, however he does not have the benefit of a willing living organ donor.

According to Dr. Stock, California is facing a critical organ shortage. It has one of the longest wait times for organs in the United States, and this new organ donation legislation will benefit everyone. Even if they aren’t HIV-positive.

“There are so many desperate people out there waiting for organs. The donor shortage is such a problem. Literally, we lose people every week.”

Stock has been performing organ transplants on people with HIV since 1999. It was then that the California organ transplant specialist received a grant to transplant uninfected, HIV-negative kidneys and livers into HIV-patients awaiting organ donations. Despite the fears of the medical community that using immunosuppressant drugs to prevent organ rejection in patients with compromised immune systems could be problematic, Stock was highly successful.

Overall, the HIV-positive organ transplant recipients had transplant success rates similar to patients without HIV. Over the course of his research, hundreds of HIV-negative organs were transplanted into HIV-positive recipients.

In 2013, President Obama signed a bill that allowed human clinical trials of HIV-positive organ transplants. The trials were promising, and safety regulations were approved for HIV-positive organ transplants by the Department of Health and Human Services just last year.

In March, Doctors at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center conducted the first HIV-positive organ transplant in the United States using an infected kidney and liver from a deceased donor.

Roughly 120,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for organ donations. Of those waiting for organ donations, 21,999 are in California. More than 20 people die every day in America waiting for organ donation and a transplant.

Senator Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat, wrote the California organ transplant bill, and he is profoundly excited and grateful by its implications.

“With this legislation, we’re saving a life this month, and many more to come.”

While doctors and patients alike appear to be reaping the benefit of the new California organ donation legislation, not everyone sees it as a positive thing.

SO VERY WRONG !!!

— Jack Ford (@Corsiar9) May 28, 2016

sounds like the've been hitting the medicinal herbs a bit too hard…

— Founding Father Sam (@TheWedge716) May 28, 2016

Do you guys even bother reading the stuff you sign? It is like having blind 5-year-olds run the state!

— Dena Leichnitz (@ABCDOnline) May 29, 2016

One Facebook user said that she has “grave concerns” about the new California organ donation policy.

“I have grave concerns about this. We have already seen medical mistakes that have cost lives and or infected people with diseases by accident. I think I heard right it is the third largest killer of Americans. I am not opposed for people with these diseases to get help. But I do not want to be a victim of being the recipient of infected blood or organs by accident. If you understand agenda 21, you can see how this could be used against people that are not infected. If they do this, there should be a completely separate building, system, and institution for protection against cross contamination to people without these diseases.”

What do you think? Is California’s new organ donation law a good thing, or could it potentially lead to unintended HIV infections?

[Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images]