Word: baboons
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...placing of a baboon heart into the chest of little Baby Fae caused indignation in many quarters. For some, who might safely be called eccentric, the concern was animal rights. Pickets outside Loma Linda University Medical Center and elsewhere protested the use of baboons as organ factories. Dr. Leonard Bailey, the chief surgeon, was not impressed. "I am a member of the human species," he said. Human babies come first. It was unapologetic speciesism. He did not even have to resort to sociology, to the argument that in a society that eats beef, wears mink and has for some time...
Baby Fae brought out defenders of man, beast and press. But who was defending Baby Fae? There was something disturbing-subtly, but profoundly disturbing-about the baboon implant. It has nothing to do with animal rights or the Frankenstein factor or full disclosure. It has to do with means and ends...
...turns out that before placing a baboon heart into the chest of Baby Fae, doctors at Loma Linda had not sought a human heart for transplant. That fact betrays their primary aim: to advance a certain line of research. As much as her life became dear to them, Baby Fae was to be their means...
...infant's record-setting survival. "This has been a success," says Dr. Donald Hill, chief of cardiovascular surgery at Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco. "They have demonstrated that there is a window early in life where the opportunity to make a successful transplant from a baboon to a human exists." But neither Hill nor other doctors foresaw any possibility of using simian hearts as a permanent solution to heart disease. "I think these transplants might be used to bide time until a human heart can be found," says Dr. Michael DeBakey, the pioneering Houston heart transplant surgeon...
Bailey and his team believe that the lessons of Baby Fae will pave the way for future baboon heart transplants, and he is convinced that the next time "we will be able to diagnose rejection earlier." The surgeon was vague about when the next time might be. "I plan to attempt it again by-and-by," he told reporters. Fae's mother, he noted, had encouraged his efforts. "The last thing she said to me was to carry on and not to let it be wasted...