Organ ruling hits home

David Watson has polycystic kidney disease and may well be in need of a kidney transplant one day. Health Canada’s recent decision to exclude sexually active gay men from donating their organs for transplant does not sit well with Mr. Watson, who is gay. (Jeff Harper / Staff)

David Watson has raised money and awareness for organ donation. Ottawa’s new regulations on gay donors feel like a slap in the face.By JOHN GILLIS Health ReporterSat. Jan 12 - 5:14 AM

WHEN David Watson learned about a new Health Canada regulation excluding sexually active gay men as potential organ donors, he took it as a slap in the face. Mr. Watson, who is gay, has polycystic kidney disease and will most likely require a kidney transplant in the future. His father has already had a kidney transplant after his own organs failed and his brother also has the disease.
This summer Mr. Watson, 25, cycled 7,550 kilometres across Canada, raising more than $25,000 for the Kidney Foundation of Canada and urging Canadians in every province to become organ donors.
The Halifax man said he’d just come from having kidney-related tests done at the hospital when he heard Health Canada had introduced a policy in December excluding any man who had had sex with a man in the previous five years from becoming an organ donor.
Mr. Watson was dumbfounded.
"After doing what I did . . . I put so much to raise awareness for organ donation. It’s not a personal thing, but I took it so personally."
Health Canada has said the regulations are based on risk and not lifestyle and that a man who has had sex with another man within five years is a high risk for transmitting infectious disease.
Spokeswoman Carole Saindon said that a gay man who had been abstinent for five years would not be excluded, but even a straight man who had a one-night stand with another man within that period would be.
Other people who cannot donate organs under the regulations include prison inmates and those who have spent more than 72 straight hours in custody in the preceding year, people with recent tattoos or piercings, people who have had sex for money or drugs within five years, and people who have used non-medical intravenous drugs in the preceding five years.
The QEII screens all potential donors using medical histories, questionnaires (for surviving relatives) to detect high-risk behaviour and blood tests to detect viruses like HIV or hepatitis.
A recipient and a doctor may agree to use an organ from a high-risk donor under an "exceptional distribution" clause, though doctors involved in organ transplantation in Nova Scotia have said getting such approval isn’t logistically plausible when many transplants require urgent action.
Mr. Watson said the regulations go too far.
"You can’t say that all homosexuals are at a higher risk," he said. "I’m personally in a very monogamous safe relationship. I’m absolutely no more risk than anyone else."
Mr. Watson is keenly aware of the long wait lists for kidney transplants. And while he couldn’t donate his own kidney, he hopes his other organs could be used in the event of his death.
"If I was in an accident today going home from work and I was killed, those organs would just go to waste," he said. "I think that’s horrible."
He’s been speaking to others and finds no one needs convincing the regulation is unjust — the use of organs should be based on real risk of disease transmission, not sexual orientation.
Mr. Watson encouraged others, especially gay men, to speak out against the regulation but not to tear up their donor cards. He hoped a change of policy or an exception would mean they could still be potential donors.
The Health Canada regulations seem to echo a now widely ignored 1994 policy of the American Centers for Disease Control, said Dr. Jeff Zaltzman, a member of the Kidney Foundation of Canada’s national organ donation committee and a transplant nephrologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto

"The regulations as they are written . . . are quite draconian; they’re probably not very well thought out and they also appear somewhat discriminatory," he said.
He noted the American rules date to a time when AIDS treatments and tests to detect the disease were not as reliable as they are today.
Dr. Zaltzman said the new Health Canada rules came as a surprise but won’t prevent him from doing kidney transplants from an acceptable living gay male donor, provided the patient is aware of the small risk of disease transmission.
"Physicians and surgeons in consent and in discussion with their recipients make those decisions all the time, regardless of what the regulations say," he said.
( jgillis@herald.ca)