Word: baboons
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...about 15 years. His immune system is barely functioning. And on top of that, in a desperate attempt four weeks ago to reverse the course of his disease, doctors at San Francisco General Hospital infused him with an experimental bone-marrow transplant from a baboon. Immunologists warned that his body would eventually reject the nonhuman tissue and that the operation would almost certainly end his life rather than prolong it. However, Getty is not only alive, but last week he was healthy enough to go home from the hospital. No matter how much time he has left, friends and family...
...worst-case scenario, such transplants could introduce humanity to a plague that would make all of those look tame. "This is a serious mistake," says Jonathan Allan, a virologist at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas. "It only takes one transmission from one baboon to a human to start an epidemic. There's no way you can make it safe...
...immune system into accepting tissues from another person. But when organs from an entirely different species are stitched into the human body, immune defenses go into overdrive, leading to swift and irreparable destruction of the foreign tissue. Two years ago, when doctors at the University of Pittsburgh transplanted baboon livers into two seriously ill patients, both men died soon after the operation...
Considering all the potential problems with baboon transplants, it's a wonder the FDA allowed Getty to undergo the operation at all. Certainly compassion for a dying man played a role. But according to scientists who are familiar with how such decisions are made, there was probably another, more subtle reason. "The chance of that bone-marrow transplant taking [hold] and working in a human is zero," says Ronald Desrosiers, professor of microbiology at Harvard Medical School. Current techniques, he believes, are simply not yet refined enough for it to work. But they could be soon...
...highly risky experiment, doctors infused bone marrow from a baboon into John Getty, a 38-year-old man dying of aids, in the hope of boosting his frail immune system. "I know I could die from the treatment,'' Getty said, "but I am certain that I will die if I do nothing...