Word: transplantation
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...transplant, and some surgeons object that those organs probably would fail because they would be deprived of their nerve supply. Not so, says Stanford University's Dr. Norman Shumway, whose team has put a dog on the heart-lung machine, removed her heart, stored the heart in cold salt water for seven hours, then put it back. The arteries and great veins were reconnected, but the nerves were not. The mongrel has since had a litter of eight pups, with no evident strain on her nerveless heart...
...Insight. Surgeons are virtually unanimous in believing that the most exciting and promising new area now being opened to them is the field of transplantation. After this momentary agreement, they promptly offer a thousand differing opinions on how soon transplantation of an organ from one human being to another will become a daily routine instead of the headline-heralded event that it is today. They are equally diverse in their views as to how surgery will eventually overcome the fact that all animals, and especially man, are designed to resist any invasion of foreign protein from any creature except...
...Nazi occupation of The Netherlands; and for patients whose kidney failure was only temporary, the contraption was a lifesaver. But it could not keep alive those whose kidneys had failed permanently. In 1951, in a desperate effort to save these patients, Brigham surgeons decided to go ahead and transplant kidneys without waiting for the mysteries of immunity to be dispelled. But all those "unprotected"' transplants eventually failed...
...Transplant. Now at the Medical College of Virginia, Dr. Hume has begun kidney transplants with modified techniques. First, Dr. Hume removes both of the patient's diseased kidneys, to lower blood pressure and to guard against infection and especially against glomerulonephritis. After the operation, Dr. Hume doses the transplant itself with X rays, on the theory that if antibody-loaded cells are moving in to attack the kidney, they will be concentrated around the target. One important thing, says Dr. Hume, is to get the replacement kidneys fresh. Most cadaver kidneys are. in effect, "in shock" for several hours...
...Rejection. Medical men who hate eager chatter about "breakthroughs" because it raises false hopes in patients are willing to make one exception. They concede that it will indeed be a major breakthrough when a way is found to tune down the immune mechanism just enough so that a transplant will take and the patient will still have a defense against infectious diseases...