Word: ammann
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...inoculating a group of 77 vulnerable youngsters with a prototype pneumonia vaccine. All had sickle-cell anemia, a genetic disorder largely confined to blacks that, besides inflicting other damage, impairs the spleen's ability to filter dangerous bacteria out of the blood. Even after two years, Dr. Arthur J. Ammann and his colleagues said, not a single patient had developed a pneumococcus infection; the only reaction from the shots in the arm was a little swelling and a short-lived fever...
Hippie Heroes. Although Wisconsin v. Yoder was the first Supreme Court case in the long history of the Amish in the U.S., the Amish have always been a people apart, at odds with society. Their founder, Jakob Ammann, was a Mennonite bishop in 17th century Switzerland. After Ammann clashed with the sect's leaders over fine points of observance and demanded strict excommunication of backsliders, he and his followers broke away in 1693 and became the Amish. They sought refuge in America after William Penn's colony became a haven of religious freedom...
Hopeful that a similar operation could help Maggie, Ammann took advantage of California's liberalized abortion law to search for an appropriate fetal thymus. The task proved difficult. For best results, Ammann needed a transplant from a healthy fetus 14 to 20 weeks old. These are rare because most California abortions are performed before the twelfth week of pregnancy. But in December, Ammann found a woman who was having a late abortion on psychiatric grounds and got permission to use the fetus' thymus...
Last month, Ammann tried the operation again on Matthew Octavio of Petaluma, four weeks old, who suffered from an immune defect that had killed six of his cousins. He was sent home, then returned to hospital with a possible respiratory infection, which the transplant might help him to overcome...
Despite its success, the operation is likely to come under fire from opponents of abortion who question the morality of using tissue from aborted fetuses. But Ammann sees no ethical problems in his operation. "We don't go around soliciting abortions," he says. "These are abortions that are already being done for other reasons." Dr. Samuel Kountz, a kidney specialist at the U.C. Medical Center, would like to try an even bolder operation-the transplant of a fetal kidney...