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«——【Preamble】】 ——»
The heart is the "engine" of the human body, and only a healthy heart can ensure the normal operation of the human body. However, cardiac disease is still a major problem in human medicine. Mankind has been searching for a solution to this problem.
For many heart diseases, a heart transplant is an important treatment. However, in the world's major hospitals, the supply of hearts is much smaller than the number of people waiting for a heart transplant, and more than 30% of heart disease patients die each year because they do not have a heart source available.
Therefore, for many heart specialists, the supply of the heart is always a headache for them. However, 39 years ago, there was a case of surgery to transplant a baboon's heart into a girl's body, which sparked controversy.
The operation was so successful that no rejection was found after the heart was transplanted into the girl. However, the doctor who performed the operation became a sinner for the ages and was criticized.
What's going on here? What is the story of a baboon's heart transplanted into a girl?
1. Poor "little angel"
On October 14, 1984, in a community hospital in Southern California, USA, a baby girl was born with a crisp cry.
The baby girl is cute and loved by her family, and she has become a little angel in the hearts of the family, and her mother named her Fiy.
The addition of a new child to the family made Fiy's family happy and very happy, and for a time they wandered in the arms of happiness. However, this happiness did not last long, and a thunderbolt of news reached the ears of Fiy's mother.
It turns out that the cute little Fiy is diagnosed with congenital hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Children with this syndrome are born with a malformation of the heart, and the left side of the heart is much smaller than the right heart, which makes their heart not supply enough blood to last a few weeks.
After hearing the news, Fiy's mother collapsed directly, and the whole family fell into endless sorrow. It is important to know that the incidence of this disease is about 1 in 10,000, but it accounts for 1 in 4 cases of newborn deaths due to heart disease.
Although organ transplantation technology had already appeared at that time, it was not perfect, let alone mature. To make matters worse, Fay was just a newborn baby, and even if she had to undergo a heart transplant, she couldn't find a matching heart source.
This news undoubtedly pronounced Fiy's "death sentence". For a family that has just wandered in happiness, how can they not feel hopeless?
Just as Fay's family was in despair, a light suddenly shone through, and they seemed to see hope again.
What is the hope, and is there really a turning point?
2. Transplant the heart of a baboon
After being found to have congenital hypoplastic left heart syndrome, Fiy was quickly transferred to Lomarinda University Medical Center in California, which is home to a renowned center for children's heart surgery.
At the Children's Heart Surgery Center, Fay underwent heart repair surgery, but the results were not significant. Because there is no suitable source of heart, it is not possible to transplant a heart.
A doctor at the surgery center regretfully told Fiy's mother that she now had only two options: to keep Fie at the surgery center until she died, or to take her home and wait for her to die.
Neither option was what Fiy's mother wanted, but she had no other choice. However, just as she was packing her things and preparing to take Fay home, she received a call from a doctor.
The content of the phone call can be summed up in one sentence, and things may take a turn for the better.
Where does the turnaround come from?
This brings us to the founder of the Children's Surgery Center, Dr. Leonard Lee Bailey of Loma Linda University in California.
Dr. Bailey graduated from Union College of Columbia in 1964 and received his medical degree from Lomarinda University, where he served at the University of Lomarinda School of Medicine.
In the '70s, Dr. Bailey developed a keen interest in infant heart surgery, and while training at the Children's Hospital of Toronto, he was saddened to see many babies dying from congenital heart disease.
When he returned to Lomarinda University, he shifted his research focus to how to transplant animal organs into babies, and did a lot of experimentation on this.
At the time of Fay's birth, Dr. Bailey was conducting an experiment on transplanting the heart of a baboon into a baby. The key technical points related to this experiment had already been approved by the hospital, and at that time there was only one experimenter who could perform the operation.
When Fay transferred to Lomarinda University, Dr. Bailey happened to be out on business, so he didn't know what was going on with Fay. When he returned, his colleagues told him about it.
Bailey took the matter very seriously and immediately called little Fye's mother.
At first, Fay's mother thought Dr. Bailey was a mad scientist, how could such a thing of transplanting a baboon's heart into a child be successful?
But out of love for her daughter, she didn't want her child to die like this, and finally agreed to Dr. Bailey and was willing to let Fay be the experimenter to perform the operation.
3. Success and failure?
At the Children's Heart Surgery Center, Fiy's mother met Dr. Bailey. Dr. Bailey was so concerned about Fay's situation that he worked overnight to answer questions from Fiy's mother and tell her that he had been experimenting with cross-species organ transplants for years.
Because the heart structure of a baboon is similar to that of a human heart, there are three aortic arch vessels in the human body, while in the body of a baboon there are two. Although the human body is different from the baboon in this regard, the function of the two is exactly the same.
Therefore, it is most appropriate to choose the heart of a baboon as a source of human heart transplantation. Dr. Bailey conducted a comparison test of six young baboons to determine which of them was the most immunocompatible with Fay.
After a comparison experiment, Dr. Bailey selected the heart of a seven-month-old baboon and performed a heart transplant for Fay, who was just two weeks old.
Although the operation was extremely difficult, it was ultimately successful. During postoperative observation, no complications were found for Fiy. Even on the fourth day after the operation, doctors removed the artificial ventilator.
Five days after the operation, Fei was not only able to breathe on her own, but also found that her body temperature and blood pressure were normal, and she was able to sleep like a normal child, which is very remarkable.
You know, there have been cases of transplanting animal hearts before, but the recipients of heart transplants will die in a very short period of time, and they can't reach the state of Fay at all, so Fiy is lucky.
However, this luck did not last long.
On the twenty-first day after surgery, Fiy's heart died and he also developed complications such as kidney failure. This poor little life eventually passed away.
After Fiy's death, it caused great controversy.
As Fei's chief doctor, Dr. Bailey has been saddled with all kinds of infamy, and has even become a sinner for the ages. In desperation, Dr. Bailey resigned from the hospital and left.
And Fiy's mother was also attacked by many people because of this incident, and some people believed that she did not have the right to make a decision for Fiy to receive a baboon heart transplant.
But how can these people understand the feelings of Fei's mother? As a mother, who can watch her child fall into the abyss? Just like Fei's mother said in a later interview, if there is a glimmer of hope, she is willing to try, she wants to seize it, because she wants her child to live in the world like other children!
Although Dr. Bailey's heart transplant for Fay did not keep her alive for a long time, it was a great step forward in the medical community, allowing people to see more possibilities to solve the problem of heart disease, and opening up a broader path for human organ transplantation!
So we should be grateful to little Fay, to her great mother, to Dr. Bailey, because they are all people who have made great contributions to the cause of human medicine!
Text| Shi Hai hooks and sinks
Edit| Zhaoming
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Bibliography:
Hou Heng, "Baby Transplantation of Baboon's Heart", Foreign Medical Information, No. 24, 1984.
Shen Zhiming, "Baboon Heart and Heart Transplantation in Children", Shanghai Laboratory Animal Science, No. 1, 1988.
Zhang Kang, ed., "Novel Science Live Room: A Super Record You Must Know", Hangzhou: Zhejiang Science and Technology Press, 2022.
Zhang Xinqing and Yang Shi (eds.), Experiencing Your Life Wisdom: Interpreting the Ethical Problems in Life, Beijing: Science Popularization Press, 2007.