pain treatment

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What can you sue for in a personal injury case?”

A graduate student who was denied a summer internship at a textile company because of her use of medical marijuana has brought an employment discrimination lawsuit against the company.

The attorney who represents the student, Carly Iafrate of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the legalization of medical marijuana would be “an empty promise” if employers are allowed to discriminate against people based on their status as medical marijuana users.

The ACLU said it believes it is the first lawsuit of its kind brought in the state.

Lawsuits have been brought in other states that have legalized the use of medical marijuana, including New Mexico, Maine, Colorado and New Jersey. The New Mexico, Maine and New Jersey cases are still pending in courts in each of those states.

Last month, a Colorado quadriplegic named Brandon Coats lost an appeal in that state’s Supreme Court. Coats was fired in 2010 after failing a drug test. He said he used medical marijuana to control involuntary muscle spasms. Colorado’s high court ruled that legalizing the use of medical marijuana did not establish a Constitutional right to use the drug.

Charlotte Personal Injury Attorney Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question: Can I wait a few months to pursue a personal injury claim?

Medical treatments involving stem cells have been hailed as holding the promise of a new generation of treatments for a variety of diseases, ailments and disorders. Now an American woman is learning that experimental stem cell treatments performed in Portugal eight years ago may have produced some unintended results.

The woman was suffering from paralysis. Doctors had used a similar method on some 20 other paralysis patients; more than half reported recovery of movement or sensation. The American woman’s treatment did not involve the controversial method of transplanting of embryonic stem cells; instead, doctors removed tissue from her nose and implanted it in her spine. Doctors hoped the cells would turn into other cell types similar to cells near the site of the woman’s injury, acting as a kind of bodily “repair kit.”

Instead, after the stem-cell operation, the woman experienced increasing pain. In 2013—eight years after the stem cell operation—doctors discovered a three-centimeter-long growth made up mainly of nasal tissue on the woman’s back. Doctors also found small pieces of bone and nerve branches that had not connected to the woman’s spinal nerves.

Doctors said this circumstance occurred in less than one-percent of operations and that many patients receiving the treatment had seen a “remarkable recovery.”

Articles Tagged with pain treatment

Medical marijuana user sues, argues company violated law by denying her an internship

Woman grows nose on her back eight years after stem-cell surgery