San Francisco Chronicle; Monday, February 16, 1998
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer

That's xeno as in xenografts and xenotransplants, the surgical transfer of organs between species -- particularly animals to people. With science moving closer to being able to put not only animal bone marrow but pig hearts, kidneys and livers into people, debate is picking up on whether such practices might endanger the general population.

Getty, 40, was in Philadelphia on Saturday to take part in a symposium on medical prospects for xenografts during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There is no federal moratorium on transplants from animals to people, and a recent review by the Public Health Service endorsed further, well-monitored research into it. But some authorities fear that wide use of animal organs could introduce new viruses or other microbes into people where they would mutate into forms highly infectious to humans, possibly spawning epidemics against which modern medicine and natural human immunology would have few defenses.

Getty's position is firm. To him, to tell somebody that he is going to die unless he gets a pig liver but that he cannot get one "because some day it could start a pig disease epidemic, so he must die -- that is unethical."

The session was organized by Dr. Suzanne Ildstad of Philadelphia's Allegheny University of the Health Sciences. She designed the baboon transplant performed on Getty on Dec. 14, 1995, at San Francisco General Hospital with participation by University of California at San Francisco doctors.

Getty, who was then moving into advanced AIDS, got an injection of baboon bone marrow. The hope was that the marrow might colonize his own bones and eventually create a population of immune cells in his system that would not be not affected by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS.

Although the baboon cells disappeared to below detectable levels within a few weeks of the injection, Getty's health improved considerably -- possibly due to the radiation and other treatments Getty got at the same time.

"I had been at death's door," he said. "But I got one pretty good year out of it."

In recent months, however, Getty's immune system has again fallen to a low ebb, the viral load in his blood is rising, and sinus and asthma-like breathing difficulties are returning. He keeps his weight up with the help of human growth hormone and anabolic steroids, and is taking several experimental medications to slow the virus' attack.

For the time being, Ildstad has suspended experiments with baboon or any other kind of transplants to treat AIDS. Her concern is not safety -- but in finding a way to help the grafts take hold. She wants to do additional basic research before trying it again, perhaps in a few years.

In the meantime, Getty said his experience has turned him into a crusader for animal-to-human transplants. His goal is to break down what he says are psychological and irrational fears on the part of many people. "I'm the first," he said, "but watch out, there are more coming."

Ildstad said at the conference that for some illnesses, animal organs appear to provide the only hope. About half of heart transplant candidates die because no suitable donor can be found.

"The donor pool is maxed out," she said. "The doctors are asking (relatives of potential donors who have died or are dying), but people are saying no."

While no method exists to prevent a whole animal organ, such as a heart or kidney, from being rejected, research programs into xenotransplantation have already shown how to increase success rates of human-to-human transplants between people who are not good genetic matches, she said. In five to ten years, she said, the extensive publicity campaigns that some patients or their supporters undertake now to find suitable blood marrow or other donors will become a thing of the past.

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