Word: loma
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...week after the historic transplant operation at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Southern California, the first infant?though not the first person?to receive a simian heart was reported to be doing remarkably well. "All vital signs are still good, and there's no sign of rejection," said Hospital Spokeswoman Patti Gentry, noting that Baby Fae was "just gulping down her formula." Outside the hospital, there was wonder and excitement over this latest medical marvel, but the enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by controversy. Antivivisectionists around the country and abroad protested what they called "ghoulish tinkering" with human and animal...
Little is known about the 5-lb. object of all this controversy or how she came to be the subject of so dramatic an experiment. Loma Linda officials have refused to reveal the child's real name, the identity of her parents or even her exact age. They did say that she was about two weeks old at the time of surgery and had been born three weeks premature. Baby Fae was referred to Loma Linda by a pediatrician in Barstow, Calif. The 546-bed facility is one of more than 60 U.S. hospitals operated by the Seventh-day Adventist...
...drastic shortage of infant hearts. Seven years ago he began investigating the possibility of using hearts from other species, or xenografts. He performed more than 150 transplants in sheep, goats and baboons, many of them between species. Last December, after what Bailey called "months of agonizing," the Loma Linda institutional review board gave him preliminary approval to implant a baboon heart in a human infant. The final go-ahead came just two days before Baby Fae's surgery. "There is evidence that the chimpanzee, orangutan or gorilla may be a better donor," Bailey noted last week, "but they are either...
Meanwhile, Sandra Nehlsen-Cannarella, a transplantation immunologist brought in from New York City's Montefiore Medical Center, conducted five days of laboratory tests to determine which of six baboons at Loma Linda most closely matched Baby Fae's tissue type. However, before the tests were complete, the infant's heart suddenly deteriorated and her lungs filled with fluid. The dying child was swiftly transferred to a respirator and given drugs to keep her blood circulating. The measures were able to sustain her long enough for a baboon donor to be chosen and surgery to begin. (Read "The Using of Baby...
...Moneim Fadali, a cardiovascular surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, was one of several physicians to suggest that the decision to use an animal organ may have been "a matter of bravado" and that a human heart "would have offered the child a better chance of survival." Loma Linda Surgeon David Hinshaw explained that he and his colleagues believed that the hope of finding a compatible human heart in time to save the dying Fae was "almost nonexistent." Indeed, infant hearts are so seldom available that transplants into very young children are rarely attempted. (Read "One Miracle, Many...