The Baby Fae Case

The Baby Fae case raises some important questions about medical ethics over Baby Fae incident. Human experiments (especially children's experiments), risk / benefit ratio, the quality of informed consent, and issues related to institutional decision making were proposed. Primarily this case shows the need for new guidelines for regulating the most desperate and notorious radical program. Dr. Bailey has done extensive research over the years on xenografts or xenografts, but no one animal recipient has survived for more than six months 16.

An American woman's baby named "Baby Fae" left the first xenotransplanted baby suffering from cardiac hypoplasia, heart disease in 1984. The program was done by Leonardo L. Bailey of the University of Loma Linda Medical Center. Linda, California. Since body fluid based graft rejection is believed to be caused primarily by ABO blood group mismatch, Fae dies after 21 days and is thought to be inevitable due to rare O type sputum . Transplantation is temporary, but unfortunately it is impossible to find a suitable allograft substitute in time.

He also transplanted the heart to a 12 - year - old girl in 1984 in Lorraine, California, Leonard Bailey, Maryland. The baby survived 20 days as the most famous recipient of xenotransplantation. From the 1980's to the 1990's, doctors continued to improve the technology to protect the new heart while balancing the dose of immunosuppressant drugs, while allowing patients to have sufficient immune function to avoid infection It was. In 1994, the new drug tacrolimus or FK - 506, originally found in fungal samples, was approved for immune suppression in transplant patients. Newer cyclosporine formulations now achieve efficacy (efficacy) at lower toxic doses

For many years, attempts by human xenografts have only been done a few times, but the FDA has not yet approved the human organ xenograft program. A child "Baby · Fee" presenting a cardiac malformation at birth survives in a short time with a heart. At the University of Pittsburgh, two men were transplanted from the liver. These patients lived for several weeks. At the end of 1995, AIDS patients were transplanted baby bone marrow. Since April 1, 1996 he is still fine and healthy, but there is no evidence that helium cells are helping his immune system.

The problem of xenotransplantation is that the organs of animals cause a violent immune reaction. Even strong drugs that block immune attacks can not completely block it. In the famous 1984 incident, California's newborn baby "Baby Fae" caused a heart attack. But it took only three weeks to fail. Because pigs are genetically distant, the body responds more strongly to porcine tissue. All human exams of pig's organs ended soon. A woman in Los Angeles who received the pig's liver in 1992 died within 34 hours. At the last time the doctor transplanted the pig's heart to a man, he was murdered in India in 1996.