The advancement of human civilization has driven the development of social sciences, scientific manufacturing, medical technology, and Internet communication, presenting us with new possibilities every day, and turning the impossible into the possible is happening every day. Advances in medical care have led to better treatments, solutions, better medical equipment, and more comprehensive medical knowledge for some of the most painful and difficult diseases of the past, so that more people can get rid of all kinds of diseases and live like a normal person. We all know that human beings evolved from apes and monkeys, so are the organs of primates different from ours? If a baboon's organs were transplanted into a human being, would they work properly? This is a question that more than one person has thought about, but not many have dared to try. 36 years ago, an American doctor, in a back to the day surgery, made a bold attempt to transplant a baboon's heart into a little girl's body, but now the heart is really functioning properly? Is the little girl alive and well?
Congenital heart disease came to her head
Thirty-five years ago, in California, Teresa was like any other mother, a first-time mother who waited quietly and nervously for her child to be born, but she did not realize that her own child was born with a congenital disease. As there was no genetic history in the family, the news of her daughter's illness was a devastating blow to the whole family. What they didn't realize even more was that the birth of their daughter would affect the medical and ethical community. Teresa's child, named Stephanie Fay, was born in 1984 at a central hospital in California, USA, and was diagnosed at birth with severe hypoplasia of the left ventricle, which means that the heart is only half functional. Back then, medical technology was not advanced, but it was possible to treat congenital heart disease. But for people at the time, little Fay's disease was still too serious, and she could have passed away in less than two weeks if she hadn't received effective treatment.
Doctors found another way
Doctors came up with a final solution for her condition: an organ transplant. But in 1984, the medical field did not have an established method of heart transplantation, and there were a few cases of successful transplants in adults. In addition, Teresa was born prematurely, so her daughter, Stephanie Fay, was born with relatively small tissue organs, thus greatly increasing the difficulty of the surgery, and finding a matching small heart was becoming a challenge. Just as the whole family was grieving, Teresa was making a last-ditch effort. Just when she thought there was no hope, a doctor gave her a glimmer of hope. This doctor, Leonard, was a doctor who had been researching organ transplants. He offered Teresa the option of an allograft, moving a baboon's heart into her daughter's body. Teresa's family was also very repulsed when they first heard the news; how could an animal's heart be transplanted into a human? But at the time Stephanie Fay had no other hope of a cure, and beating a dead horse, Teresa decided to give it a try just like that, due to time constraints, Teresa signed the papers for the surgery in order to give her daughter a new lease on life, and her daughter Stephanie Fay became the world's first baby to be transplanted with a baboon's heart.
The results of the surgery were shocking
Teresa hired this doctor named Leonard to operate on her daughter, they signed a confidentiality agreement, and the whole operation took 10 hours, and the baboon's heart started beating again inside the little girl's body, which thrilled everyone present. But despite the very strict confidentiality that was in place, word quietly got out. The debate about allogeneic heart transplants was ignited. Some people were happy that the operation was a success, while others questioned whether it was unethical to use primates for organ transplants, and animal protection societies sent letters condemning the Dr. Leonard and the Teresa family. In the midst of the frenzied debate, Stephanie Fay's body rejected the baboon's heart, which became infected and unable to function properly, and Stephanie Fay eventually went on to die. The story was a joke and that was the end of it. What do the ones in front of the screen think about this? Feel free to comment below!