Word: transplants
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...doing everything you can to protect your children? What if, God forbid, your daughter developed leukemia and needed a bone-marrow transplant? What if neither you nor your spouse could offer a close enough match to donate marrow? If you'd had the foresight to preserve some critical blood cells found in the umbilical cord and placenta that nourished your other children in the womb, you might be able to save your daughter's life...
First, it helps to understand that bone-marrow transplants are the most unforgiving of all transplant operations, requiring closer matches in tissue types between donors and recipients than for, say, hearts or kidneys. Because the immune system comes from the marrow, a transplant of that reddish pulp is, in effect, an immune-system transplant. There's the usual possibility that the body may reject the graft as "foreign." Then there's the almost surreal danger that the transplanted immune system will attack and kill its host...
...birth, seems to be an ideal solution. The placenta is teeming with the all-important stem cells that can generate a new immune system. Even better, these cells are, as doctors put it, "naive," making them less likely to attack their new host. As a result, a cord-blood transplant doesn't have to match a recipient quite so closely as a bone-marrow transplant. This experimental treatment could prove especially helpful to African-American patients and other minorities whose greater genetic diversity often means they have trouble finding a good bone-marrow match...
...though, it might be difficult to share such faith and optimism. The surgery Fox received is not helpful to all patients, nor is it a permanent cure. Though one of the most important legislative acts of the Clinton Administration was the lifting of the ban on fetal tissue transplant research to aid Alzheimer's and Parkinson's in 1993, increased funding and public awareness are still lacking in the search for a true cure for the disease...
DIED. VLADIMIR DEMIKHOV, 82, pioneering transplant surgeon; in an undisclosed location in Russia. Demikhov performed the world's first heart transplant...