Today in Technology History
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October 26
Seventeen years ago, doctors in California performed a controversial transplant operation on an infant known as "Baby Fae."
The baby was born prematurely on October 14, 1984, suffering from hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a malformation of the heart. Babies born with this condition usually die a few days after birth. In most cases, it is not possible to fix the infant's malformed heart with surgery, and infant heart transplants are extremely rare since there are very few potential donors.
But a surgeon named Leonard Bailey had another option: What about replacing the baby's heart with a baboon's heart?
Xenotransplantation is the technical term for organ transplants between species. The first documented animal-to-human organ transplants were in the 1960s, with kidneys from baboons and chimpanzees. There had been only a handful of cases -- all unsuccessful -- where entire animal hearts were put into adult humans, although many animal heart valves had been transplanted successfully.
By 1984 there had been great progress in making drugs to suppress the human body's natural tendency to reject transplanted tissue. Dr. Bailey had spent years transplanting hearts between newborn animals, and he believed it could work with human babies. After lengthy consultation with the parents, he and his team gave Baby Fae a baboon heart on October 26.
At first the operation seemed successful and Baby Fae appeared much healthier. But despite the drugs, her immune system began to reject the baboon heart and she died three weeks after the surgery.
Meanwhile, the operation caused an international firestorm of controversy. The public was both transfixed and horrified. Medical ethicists questioned the procedure, and animal rights activists protested across America.
There have been no other infant heart xenotransplant surgeries since Baby Fae, although thousands of newborns have died of hypoplastic left-heart syndrome since 1984. In recent years, scientists have begun to hope that genetic manipulation might make xenotransplantation safer for humans.
Related links:
Click here to read about Baby Fae, from the medical center where she was treated.
This is the homepage of an organization opposed to xenotransplantation.
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