Word: thymuses
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...Virginia Caspe Livingston of the University of San Diego has also used such vaccines in patients with breast cancer and cancer of the thymus, and has achieved remissions. Dr. Loren Humphrey, chairman of the department of surgery at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, has evaluated 96 patients who have received injections of cells from people with tumors similar to their own; more than 20 have had partial remissions and three now appear completely free of disease...
Vital Gland. Last summer, Maggie was referred to Ammann, a specialist in pediatric immunology. When she failed to respond to injections of a white blood cell extract as a means of arousing immunity, Ammann realized that the problem was in her thymus gland-a butterfly-shaped bit of tissue that lies just behind the breastbone. The gland has a key role in the development of the body's immune responses.Tn one previous case, Ammann knew-implantation of a thymus from a miscarried fetus stimulated this process in a child born without the gland...
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...
Moral Question. Flown to San Francisco in an insulated container, the thymus was implanted during a three-hour procedure. That proved relatively easy. Many other transplants must be hooked up to the circulatory system in order to function properly; the thymus, requiring no connection, is merely placed in the abdominal cavity. Maggie's liver and spleen, which had become enlarged during her illnesses, have decreased in size. She is now at home, and her immunological system appears to be working normally...
...ANTILYMPHOCYTE TREATMENT. One way to depress white-cell and antibody activity is to introduce antibody against the lymphocytes themselves. So thymus glands, spleens and lymph nodes are removed from human cadavers, and the extract is injected into horses. The horses' rejection mechanism goes to work and makes particles active against the human lymphocytes. The horses are later bled, antilymphocyte serum is extracted, and may be further refined to a globulin fraction. At the University of Colorado, a team headed by Dr. Thomas Starzl has performed 19 successful transplants since last June; given antilymphocyte globulin, the patients have got along...