Organ Transplants: One Million Dollars for Research
The California budget for fiscal 1999-2000, signed into law on June 29, includes $1,000,000 "for liver and kidney transplant research for people with HIV, which will permit the San Francisco campus [of the University of California] to examine organ transplants treatment options for individuals with HIV."Although it will take place in San Francisco, this research is important to everyone. People with HIV have been almost entirely excluded from organ transplants, and many have died as a result. Meanwhile, perfectly good livers are thrown away because the donor is believed to be gay, and therefore conceivably infected too recently to be detected on tests. Much of this exclusion is a carry-over from early days before effective treatments; other factors are prejudice, surgeons' fears that they could become infected while performing the operation, and medical uncertainty about such issues as possible interactions between antiretrovirals and the immune-suppressive drugs used after transplantation. The new research funding may help to end the most deadly discrimination against persons with HIV--and advance knowledge of transplantation and the immune system, for everyone's benefit.
Credit for this victory goes to ACT UP/Golden Gate (especially Jeff Getty), and to Assemblywoman Carole Migden of San Francisco, who moved the measure through the budget process in the legislature. A similar measure last year was vetoed by then-governor Pete Wilson.
