Tissue Transplants

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.

Clint Hallam, the Australian man who received a pioneering hand and forearm transplant seven weeks ago, is able to move his fingers and rotate his wrist, surgeons said this week. Hallam is able to bend each finger about 25 degrees and then straighten it out, according to Dr. Earl Owen, who headed the surgical team that performed the operation in France. However, the patient has regained no sensation.

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan has declined to rule on whether to extend the government's controversial ban on fetal-tissue research, an unexpected action that places responsibility for the decision with a lower official known to favor continuing the ban, health officials said Tuesday.

A man whose left hand was blown off while playing with a powerful firecracker 13 years ago received the first hand transplant in the United States. Hours later, the new hand was pink and warm. The 14 1/2-hour surgery, completed Monday, was the second such transplant ever. But doctors cautioned that the patient, Matthew David Scott, 37, had a high risk of blood clots and other complications in the first 24 hours.

An inherited human disorder that causes retardation and skeletal abnormalities has been cured in mice by the injection of a human gene, a researcher said last week. The technique cannot now be used in humans, but the experiment demonstrates that gene replacement is feasible for treating an important group of human disorders, said Edward Birkenmeier of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me. "It works remarkably well," Birkenmeier said. "You can completely cure the mice."

Health officials continued to search Friday for 50 or more transplant recipients who may have received organs, tissue or bone grafts from a donor whose infection with the AIDS virus had gone undetected. While the potential danger of AIDS infection from organ transplants is not unknown, this is believed to be the largest number of patients affected by a single donor, federal health officials said.

The House approved legislation Thursday that would overturn a federal ban on fetal tissue research, but, in a politically significant victory for the Bush Administration, the vote fell short of the number needed to override an almost certain presidential veto. Although many supporters were absent for the vote, opponents--who object to the research because it involves tissue obtained through elective abortions--attracted three more votes than the one-third needed to sustain a veto.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen on Tuesday called a controversial moratorium on fetal tissue research--first imposed while he was secretary--a "mistake" and urged speedy approval of legislation that would overturn it. He also opposed as "medically unworkable" a compromise proposal by President Bush to encourage the research as long as it was conducted only with tissue obtained through ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages rather than through elective abortions.

The White House is expected to launch a last-minute attempt today to derail expected congressional action on legislation that would overturn a federal ban on fetal-tissue research. The action is likely to come in an order by President Bush to establish a national bank and registry for tissue obtained from ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages.

An amputee who received a transplanted hand from a cadaver at a Kentucky hospital said that the joy of seeing his new left hand replaced the horror he had felt since waking from amputation surgery in 1985. "My first impression was, 'Wow, 13 years has just evaporated,' " Matthew Scott said at a news conference at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky., where the 15-hour operation to attach a new hand was completed Jan. 25.