In 1984, a baby girl in the United States successfully survived after a baboon heart transplant. How many days did she live?

The importance of science and technology has long been self-evident in China today. It is not GDP or military power. Technology is considered by many to be the symbol of the rise and rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

The ancient Chinese society did not attach importance to technology, but this is a thing of the past. The Chinese will pay more and more attention to technology and strive to overtake others on the track of technology. The development of science and technology is closely related to people, and technology will eventually be applied to people.

In 1984, there was an American baby girl who became the focus of the world because of an operation. It was also because of this operation that she made a contribution to the development of world medicine. contribution. So who is she?

Her name is Stephanie. She was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. A doctor transplanted a baboon heart to her and successfully saved her life, making her the focus of the world. So how many days did she live?

1. A girl with congenital deficiencies

On the night of November 14, 1984, a young pregnant woman was sent to a hospital in California, USA. After a painful struggle , this pregnant woman gave birth to a daughter. The mother was named Teresa and the daughter was named Stephanie.

At first, she thought everyone was happy. The pregnant woman breathed a long sigh of relief. However, what she didn’t expect was that before she could enjoy the joy of becoming a mother, the doctor told her the bad news. , her child was born with only half a heart.

Only half of the heart is just a metaphor. The name of this disease is hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The human heart consists of two parts, the left and right parts. In this newborn baby, the left part of the heart had developmental problems.

After hearing the news announced by the doctor, Stephanie’s family collapsed instantly. Teresa, who had just given birth to her daughter, fainted immediately. After waking up, she could only cry when she recalled the news. Washing her face, she was unwilling to face such a result.

While Teresa was immersed in grief, a phone call found her, which brought her hope.

The person who made this call was a doctor named Leonard. He claimed to know Teresa's condition on the phone and claimed that there was an operation that might be able to save Teresa's daughter.

The name of the operation Leonard was talking about was xenotransplantation. This was a technology he had been studying for a long time. When he learned that Teresa’s newborn daughter had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, After that, he called Teresa immediately.

He hopes Theresa will agree to allow him to operate on his daughter. He wants to transplant a baboon heart to Theresa's daughter. Moreover, he claimed that she had been studying this operation for a very long time and that he had great confidence and certainty in helping Teresa's daughter recover.

After listening to Leonard’s suggestion, Teresa actually didn’t take it very seriously at first. She felt that Leonard was talking nonsense. How is it possible to transplant a baboon heart into a human body?

Anyone with a little bit of medical knowledge will know that even if an organ transplant is performed between humans, there may still be rejection reactions. It would be unreasonable to perform an organ transplant between humans and baboons. Night stories.

Teresa put Leonard's advice behind her and pinned all her hopes on the doctors at the hospital.

Unfortunately, the doctors at the hospital have nothing to do about this situation. This was the situation when Teresa's daughter was born. The only reason to blame is that Teresa did not have regular check-ups before giving birth to her daughter.

Pregnant women today generally undergo regular check-ups during pregnancy to prevent any defects in the baby. There are many defects, such as underdevelopment or developmental delays, that can be detected through pregnancy tests.

Once such a congenital defect is discovered, the hospital will advise pregnant women to remove the child. After all, the birth of such a child is a pain for the mother and the child.

At this time, Teresa had no time to regret it. Seeing that her daughter’s breathing was getting weaker and weaker, she finally decided to take the risk. She dialed Leonard’s phone number and agreed to Leonard’s call. My own daughter undergoes surgery.

So what was the result of Leonard transplanting a baboon heart into Teresa’s daughter?

Such an earth-shattering operation can simply be described as drama. The operation was initially effective, but the condition worsened thereafter, and Teresa's daughter Stephanie eventually died.

2. Xenogeneic Organ Transplantation Surgery

Organ transplantation surgery must be familiar to many people. Think about the young man who sold his kidney when the iPhone first came out. What he did was such an organ transplant. It's just that regular organ transplants involve voluntary donation of organs to another party, and his transaction is illegal.

Organ transplantation can be completed relatively smoothly among similar humans. Nowadays, hospitals will conduct large-scale screening before performing this type of surgery. Generally speaking, if blood relatives undergo organ transplantation, they will not experience rejection.

Relatives such as father or mother, cousins, and sisters can all undergo organ transplantation. The operation is very convenient, and there are countless successful cases. In the absence of such voluntary donations from relatives, one has to wait for those who unfortunately passed away to voluntarily donate their organs.

There is a huge organ donation bank around the world. Every year, countless people waiting for organ donation close their eyes forever while waiting for a match. This is because it has always been very difficult to match organs between strangers, and being able to match them is simply lucky.

Xenogeneic organ transplantation is a surgery that exists to solve such a problem. As the name suggests, xenogeneic organ transplantation does not refer to the transplantation of organs between humans, but the transplantation of organs from one species. Organ transplantation into another species.

The risks brought by this kind of cross-racial organ transplantation are very great. It is extremely easy to produce rejection reactions, which will not only cause disease or necrosis of the transplanted organ, but may also endanger the patient's life.

For example, there is a kind of porcine endogeneous retrovirus in pigs. This virus has no effect on pigs. Pigs can still live a lively life. However, once the organs carrying this virus are transplanted Once inside the human body, the transplant recipient will soon die.

This is why this kind of xenogeneic organ transplant surgery is difficult to achieve. Although the idea is wonderful, there are almost no successful cases in practice.

The reason why Leonard contacted Teresa was to perform such an operation on Teresa’s daughter.

No matter how much research is done on animals, it will not get the practical data that Leonard needs for his research. What he needs is research on real people.

On October 26, 1984, Leonard led his team to perform the first operation in human history to transplant a baboon heart into a human.

In order to carry out this operation smoothly, Leonard's team spent a high price to find 6 healthy young baboons, and then selected a heart that best matched Teresa's daughter Stefani. .

After more than 10 hours of surgery, the heart was successfully transplanted into Teresa's body. When the heart began to beat inside Stefani's body, nearly everyone shed tears.

The next day, news of such a successful operation made headlines in major newspapers around the world.

This is an era-changing progress for mankind. Once this kind of surgery can be realized, many patients who have been waiting for organ donation will have a chance of life.

At the beginning, all the indicators of Stefani’s body were completely normal. The baboon’s heart beat strongly in Stefani’s body. Stefani also brought hope of life to the world.

Unfortunately, on the 21st day, various indicators on Stefani's body suddenly started to show red lights. Although the doctors rescued him, they quickly removed the baboon's heart from Stefani's body. separated from his body, but Stefani eventually died unfortunately.

According to data, Stefani’s cause of death was body rejection and organ failure. In other words, although the baboon's heart played a role at the beginning of the operation, it still caused Stefani's death.

And this also caused Leonard to be criticized verbally and writtenly by all walks of life. People blame Leonard for Stefani's death. At the same time, they also attributed the death of the baboon to Leonard. They think Stefani is a life, isn't the baboon a life? Human beings cannot deprive another life of the opportunity to survive in the name of life.

As for such an operation, history can only tell whether it is right or wrong. It doesn’t hurt to stand up and talk. Those animal protectionists will always have various reasons to hinder the progress of medicine. Perhaps this is the price that must be paid for technological progress.

Summary

Leonard did not stop his research. In the decades after Stefani's death, he still struggled on the front line of xenogeneic organ transplantation. Although Stefani passed away unfortunately, her survival for 21 days still gave the medical community great hope in xenogeneic organ transplantation.

In 2018, Leonard transplanted a pig heart into a baboon. This operation allowed the baboon to survive for 195 days, which was considered a historic breakthrough.