Today in History October 26 - Baby receives a heart transplant from a baboon.

October 26 is the 299th day of the year. There are 66 days remaining until the end of the year.

"Baby Fae", shortly after her transplant.
The dark stripe on her torso is the surgical incision.

Today's Highlight in History
1984 – "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon.


Stephanie Fae Beauclair, known as Baby Fae, was an American infant born in 1984 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. She became the first infant subject of a xenotransplant procedure, receiving the heart of a baboon. The procedure, performed by Leonard L. Bailey at Loma Linda University Medical Center, was successful, but Fae died 21 days later of heart failure due to rejection of the transplant. The rejection is thought to be have been caused largely by a humoral response against the graft, due to Fae's type O blood creating antibodies against the type AB xenograft. The blood type incompatibility was seen as unavoidable: fewer than 1% of baboons are type O, and Loma Linda only had seven young female baboons – all of which were type AB – available as potential donors. It was hoped that the transplant could be replaced by an allograft at a later date, before Fae's body began generating isohaemagglutinins, but a suitable donor could not be found in time.

The procedure was subject to a wide ethical and legal debate, but the attention that it generated is thought to have paved the way for Bailey to perform the first successful infant allograft heart transplant a year later.

The Baby Fae case, and Bailey's role in it, has been a popular case study in the realm of medical ethics. Bailey did not look for a human heart for Fae. There were questions as to whether parents should be allowed to volunteer children for experimental medical procedures, and whether the parents themselves were properly informed by Bailey. However, because Fae's mother had no medical insurance, she could not afford to pay for the heart transplant procedure. The xenograft, on the other hand, was offered for free. When asked why he had picked a baboon over a primate more closely related to humans in evolution, he replied "Er, I find that difficult to answer. You see, I don't believe in evolution."Charles Krauthammer, writing in Time, said the Baby Fae case was totally within the realm of experimentation and was "an adventure in medical ethics." Ultimately, the American Medical Association and top medical journals criticized Bailey, concluding that xenografts should be undertaken only as part of a systematic research program with controls in randomized clinical trials.
Wikipedia

World Events

1863 – The Football Association, the oldest football association in the world, is formed in London.
1905 – Norway becomes independent from Sweden.
1909 – Itō Hirobumi, four time Prime Minister of Japan (the 1st, 5th, 7th and 10th) and Resident-General of Korea, is assassinated by An Jung-geun at the Harbin train station in Manchuria.
1921 – The Chicago Theatre opens.
1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.
1955 – Ngô Đình Diệm declares himself Premier of South Vietnam.
1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.
1964 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed.
1967 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.
1968 – Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy pilots Soyuz 3 into space for a four-day mission.
1977 – Ali Maow Maalin, the last natural case of smallpox, develops rash in Merca district, Somalia. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
1979 – Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by Korean Central Intelligence Agency head Kim Jae-gyu. Choi Kyu-hah becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May.
1984 – "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon.
1985 – The Australian government returns ownership of Uluru to the local Pitjantjatjara Aborigines.
1992 – The Charlottetown Accord fails to win majority support in a Canada wide referendum.
1992 – The London Ambulance Service is thrown into chaos after the implementation of a new CAD, or Computer Aided Dispatch, system which failed.
1994 – Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty.
1995 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shaqaqi in his hotel in Malta.
1999 – Britain's House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.
2000 – Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Côte d'Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï.
2001 – The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.
2002 – Moscow theater hostage crisis: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.
2003 – The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km2), and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.