Tissue Transplants

The first fetal-to-fetal tissue transplant in the United States demonstrates how physicians and parents are willing to test the boundaries of medical knowledge in an attempt to cure fatal childhood diseases. The deceptively simple experimental procedure was performed in May, 1990, by Dr. R. Nathan Slotnick of the UC Davis School of Medicine who said this week he was "still in limbo" about whether it was successful.

Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own bone marrow's stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. The case of tuberculosis patient Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian living in Barcelona, was published online today in the medical journal the Lancet. Scientists and doctors in Italy and Britain stripped the cells off a donor windpipe, leaving only a tube of connective tissue, and produced millions of cartilage and tissue cells from Castillo's marrow to cover it. Once they were in place, the trachea was transplanted into Castillo in June.

Thank you for bringing up the subject of fetal tissue transplants. Unfortunately, it was little more than another example of media bias against unborn children. Out of 61 inches of print, a mere 1 inch is given to the pro-life side, a token comment by Dr. John Wilke, president of the National Right to Life Committee. While I sympathize with those who suffer from Parkinson's, I also grieve for the lives of the unborn who die from abortion. I am diminished by their wrongful deaths.

A German farmer who received the world's first complete double arm transplant said incredulity gave way to joy when he woke from surgery and saw he had arms again. Karl Merk, 54, lost his arms just below the shoulders in a combine accident six years ago. He told reporters at the Munich University Clinic, "It was really overwhelming when I saw that I had arms again." Merk is recovering well nearly three months after his operation and can perform simple tasks such as opening doors and turning on lights.

Just look back on the past decade and you'll see technological breakthroughs coming everywhere from software and silicon to DNA and superconductors. Virtually any material can now be a medium of innovation. But does society want its breakthrough innovations to come from the tissue of aborted fetuses? We're about to find out. Roughly 1.6 million abortions are performed annually in this country.

The Food and Drug Administration, reacting to concern in Congress, moved Friday to guarantee the safety of human tissue and bones used in 450,000 transplant operations in the United States each year. FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler said that the agency was issuing interim rules on an emergency basis after finding evidence that some "tissue brokers" may be dealing in infectious body parts, principally cadavers from Eastern Europe and Russia.

Pioneering medical research frequently provokes ethical controversies. But no research initiative in American medicine has evoked more genuine dishonesty or more hypocrisy than the use of fetal tissue transplants to help treat victims of Parkinson's disease, diabetes and other crippling illnesses. This controversy offers a shameful example of medical innovation mismanagement. At the center of this controversy are the products of abortion: dead fetuses.

The federal government Tuesday approved the first grant for fetal tissue research since President Clinton lifted a five-year ban on studies using cells from aborted fetuses. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke is giving $4.5 million to three institutions to study the effects of implanting fetal tissue into the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease. Dr. Patricia Grady, head of the federal institute, called the research promising.

Thin sheets of cheek tissue can be used to replace the damaged corneas of people blinded by certain eye diseases, Japanese researchers have reported. Their findings, published in the Sept. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, may offer new routes to restoring damaged vision and perhaps also for engineering other types of grow-your-own tissue transplants. Dr.

U.S. physicians are poised to begin a new era in the surgical treatment of Parkinson's disease, one that proponents say will bypass the ethical and accessibility problems of using human fetal tissue transplants and be safer than the now widely used pallidotomies, in which a small part of the brain is destroyed. The new approach involves implanting fetal pig brain cells, which are readily available and remarkably similar to human tissues.

A German farmer who lost his arms in an accident has been successfully fitted with two new limbs in what is believed to be the first complete double arm transplant, his surgeons said. Reiner Gradinger, medical director at the Munich University Clinic, said doctors spent 15 hours last week attaching the arms to a 54-year-old man who had lost his just below the shoulder six years ago. "The reattachment appears up to now to have proceeded optimally," Gradinger said, adding the patient was recovering well.

A team of British scientists using cellular implants has restored sight in adult mice -- possibly paving the way for similar techniques in the treatment of some forms of human blindness. Robert MacLaren, Rachael Pearson and their colleagues from the Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, plucked retinal cells from newborn mice and transplanted them into adult mice with impaired vision. With the new retinal cells, the animals were able to see lights.

SKIN doesn't get any respect. We heedlessly scratch, scrape and bruise it, and intentionally scorch it in the summer sun in our quest for the perfect tan. Yet consider what it does. The largest organ in the body, this 1.8-square-meter network of nerves, blood vessels, pigments, fibrous cells and sweat and oil glands keeps fluids in and bacteria out, cools us down, holds our other organs neatly inside our bodies and senses the environment, warning us of dangers such as extreme heat or cold.

Israeli researchers have transplanted frozen, then thawed ovaries into sheep and then harvested functioning eggs. Two human pregnancies have been reported after transplantation of frozen ovarian tissues but not intact ovaries. Both cases have been clouded by the possibility that the women's damaged ovarian tissue had recovered and provided the eggs for the pregnancy.

Thin sheets of cheek tissue can be used to replace the damaged corneas of people blinded by certain eye diseases, Japanese researchers have reported. Their findings, published in the Sept. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, may offer new routes to restoring damaged vision and perhaps also for engineering other types of grow-your-own tissue transplants. Dr.

The business of regenerative medicine was dealt another blow this week with the collapse of Advanced Tissue Sciences Inc. of San Diego, a pioneering firm that sold a replacement skin for burn victims and diabetics. The firm's bankruptcy filing Thursday came two weeks after rival Organogenesis Inc. of Boston sought bankruptcy protection from its creditors.

An organ transplant company reported Saturday that two people who received tissue from an AIDS-infected man have preliminarily tested positive for the deadly virus. A spokesman for LifeNet Transplantation Services, the agency that distributed the man's tissue and organs, said the two had received particularly risky "fresh-frozen" tissue grafts, which were not treated with alcohol for fear that the chemical might kill the cells. A third recipient has been identified and will be tested, he said.

A research clinic in Santa Barbara has entered into an agreement to import fetal tissue from Russia to transplant into diabetics. The agreement by the Sansum Clinic reflects U.S. researchers' frustrations over difficulties in obtaining fetal tissue for research purposes, despite President Clinton's recent lifting of a moratorium on the use of such tissue. This is the first agreement of its kind between U.S. researchers and Russian authorities.

Shares of CryoLife Inc., which collects and freezes human tissue for transplant, tumbled 63% a day after U.S. regulators said they ordered the company to recall and halt sales of most of its processed tissue because of safety concerns. After being halted early Thursday, shares of CryoLife closed down $3.49 at $2.03 on the NYSE. .

The government on Wednesday ordered a Georgia tissue bank whose products are linked to a death and serious infections to stop distributing its cadaver tissue, charging that CryoLife Inc. can't guarantee the grafts are free of fungus or bacteria. The unusually harsh action by the Food and Drug Administration comes after months of failed inspections and negotiations with the Kennesaw, Ga.