Illinois first state with law allowing HIV organ transplant

By Maura Kelly Lannan

Associated Press

July 15, 2004

CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois on Thursday became the first state with a law specifically allowing HIV-positive people to donate organs to others with the virus, but for anyone to actually use the state law, federal rules will have to change.

Currently, organs from HIV-infected patients are discarded to prevent them from being transplanted into uninfected patients and spreading the virus that causes AIDS.

But those organs could prolong the lives of people who already have HIV, many of whom are living longer because of advances in medicine, said Dr. Patrick Lynch, a hepatologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital who helped write the legislation signed into law Thursday by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"When those laws were originally put on the books, they made sense. HIV was, unfortunately, a death sentence back then," Lynch said. "That doesn't make sense anymore."

Right now, he said, about 15 people with HIV are awaiting liver transplants at Northwestern Memorial. If they get the transplants, the organs will come from healthy donors, organs that could have gone to other healthy patients.

"What this law allows is expanding the base of potential donors," said Rep. Larry McKeon, a Democrat from Chicago who has HIV.

But before HIV-positive organ donations can be performed in Illinois, officials will have to work with the United Network for Organ Sharing -- which coordinates the nation's organ transplant system under contract with the government -- to change U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations that prohibit it.

Proponents hope the Illinois law will prompt other states to help pressure officials to make that change.

But opponents worry there aren't enough controls to prevent infected organs from accidentally being given to someone who does not have HIV.

No organizations publicly opposed the Illinois legislation except the Illinois State Medical Society, which wanted language in the law preventing doctors from being held liable if the virus is accidentally transmitted during surgeries.

Allowing transplants among HIV patients would make more non-infected organs available for other patients, said Kim McCullough, spokeswoman for Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network, an Elmhurst, Ill.-based organization that recovers organs for patients in Illinois and Indiana and plans to work to get the federal rules changed.

"The end result is that more donated organs are available," McCullough said.

Blagojevich said the law will help people with HIV live longer, healthier lives.

"As we learn more about HIV and AIDS, and the medications used to manage the disease, we need to be willing to explore new ways to treat and care for those with the devastating illness," the governor said.

Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2004 The St. Louis Post Dispatch.