The Case of Baby Fae

Ethics of Innovation in Surgery for Congenital Cardiac Diseases

“…17 If one believes that these words are perhaps too cautionary, consider the news-breaking story and dazzling operation that was performed in Loma Linda, California in 1984 when Leonard Bailey and his team performed a cardiac xenotransplant of the heart of a baboon into a newborn human infant with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. 18,19 The condition was clear: this child would die without an operation. At that time, surgical palliation as described by Norwood was fraught with high mortality and unknown outcomes.…”

“…Let us also remember that a slower progress in the conquest of disease would not threaten society … . but that society would indeed be threatened by the erosion of those moral values whose loss, possibly caused by too ruthless a pursuit of scientific progress, would make its most dazzling triumphs not worth having.” 17 If one believes that these words are perhaps too cautionary, consider the news-breaking story and dazzling operation that was performed in Loma Linda, California in 1984 when Leonard Bailey and his team performed a cardiac xenotransplant of the heart of a baboon into a newborn human infant with hypoplastic left heart syndrome 18 , 19 . The condition was clear: this child would die without an operation.…”

Imagining transpecies kinship in xenotransplantation

“…Bailey -an obscure cardiac surgeon at a little known medical institution -was challenged far and wide by ethicists, and ostracized and marginalized by established xeno experts (Annas, 1985, Capron et al, 1985, Jonasson and Hardy, 1985, Knoll and Lundberg, 1985, Kushner and Belliotti, 1985, Stoller, 1990, McCormick, 1987, Nature, 1984. In the wake of this failed surgery a decade-long, global moratorium of human research ensued ).…”

Parental autonomy and consent to treatment

“…For instance, in the example of the baby Fae, the doctor's belief was that the intention of preserving life was suf®cient justi®cation for transplanting a baboon's heart (Breo 1984). This created considerable ethical debate concerning experimentation not grounded in scienti®c research (Redfern 1984, Jonasson & Hardy 1985.…”