Faculty Bibliography

[Clint] Hallam is gaining feeling in his new fingers and hand. He has clipped new fingernails, and hair is growing on the forearm. Hallam, who says he is a former computer consultant, looks trim and healthy. He says he's going to a gym at least four hours a day and taking lessons to resume playing the piano and flying an airplane. Hallam flew halfway around the world from his home in Perth to get a dead Frenchman's hand from a team of doctors from Australia, England, France and Italy that Dr. Earl Owen, a microsurgeon in Sydney, assembled at the Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyons. Hallam says that eight months before the transplant, he told Owen the precise circumstances, but Owen says Hallam had told him he was a carpenter, omitting the part about prison

Transplant surgeons who once concentrated on vital organs like hearts, livers and kidneys are branching out, transplanting an array of body parts with surprising success, and possibly heralding a day when tissues not essential to life are routinely given to others. Still, as word of the early successes spreads, doctors are beginning to stretch their imaginations. Leading transplant surgeons envision a future where they can put new faces on burn patients; give a woman new breasts or even a uterus; transplant penises; and reconstruct jaws and neck tissues for patients with cancer, gunshot wounds, dog bites or accident injuries

To the astonishment of many experts, the two men recently given new hands in Lyon, France, and Louisville, Ky., are progressing well, without rejection crises. With less publicity, surgeons elsewhere have successfully performed experimental knee, larynx, trachea, femur, nerve and muscle transplants. Still, as word of the early successes spreads, doctors are beginning to stretch their imaginations. Leading transplant surgeons envision a future where they can put new faces on burn patients; give a woman new breasts, or even a uterus; transplant penises; and reconstruct jaws and neck tissues for patients with cancer, gunshot wounds, dog bites or accident injuries. But the new, nonvital transplants raise disturbing ethical questions. With rare exceptions, transplant recipients must, for the rest of their lives, take powerful anti-rejection drugs, whose side effects include increased risks of infection, diabetes, cancer and other conditions. Who should decide if the risk is worth the reward? Who should pay for the procedures? If they prove effective, will people be willing to donate their tissues for nonessential operations?

To the astonishment of many experts, the two men recently given new hands in Lyon, France, and Louisville, Ky., are progressing well, without rejection crises. With less publicity, surgeons elsewhere have successfully performed experimental knee, larynx, trachea, femur, nerve and muscle transplants. Leading transplant surgeons envision a future where they can put new faces on burn patients, give a woman new breasts or a uterus, transplant penises and reconstruct jaws and neck tissues. In Madison, however, UW-Madison Medical School physicians have avoided the more exotic, nonessential transplants, fearing that the negative side effects of current powerful anti-rejection drugs would outweigh the positives of a new hand or trachea, Dr. Hans Sollinger, one of University Hospital's most well-known transplant surgeons, said Monday

Smallpox, the ancient disease, was eradicated 20 years ago. Smallpox, the virus, is on death row, frozen in two highly protected laboratories in the United States and Russia. Like lawyers filing last-minute briefs, scientists have come up with new arguments for reprieve. Until Russia's secret stores were exposed, scientists elsewhere had virtually abandoned smallpox research. But now scientific leaders in the United States, Russia, and elsewhere have begun to seriously question why WHO should insist on destroying a virus that might still exist secretly in other countries. The most compelling reason for keeping variola is to discover potentially lifesaving drugs in case the virus ever reappears, either naturally or as an act of war. Few potential anti-variola drugs exist, and scientists are handicapped in developing new ones because the virus naturally infects only humans and by lack of an animal model for drug tests

Prompted by fears of a new outbreak of one the world's deadliest scourges, a World Health Organization panel in Geneva decided today to postpone eradicating the world's known remaining stocks of the smallpox virus until at least 2002. Virtually all member nations said they remained committed to the elimination of the smallpox stocks as soon as possible. But the recommendation to the World Health Assembly, the organization's governing body, reflected widespread agreement that more time is needed to study smallpox before it is irrevocably destroyed. Though smallpox was officially declared eradicated as a disease in 1980, most officials now acknowledge that there are probably clandestine stocks of smallpox virus throughout the world, and that retaining the virus could speed the development of new drugs to fight a possible outbreak, whether due to terrorism or other factors

For example, research using the virus might yield drugs against the disease, or improved vaccines to prevent it. These would be of no use, in effect, unless some rogue nation unleashed hidden stores of smallpox virus in a biological terror attack, a prospect no longer regarded as outlandish. Or use of new techniques might decipher some of smallpox's distinctive features, providing clues to help fight other diseases. But attitudes began to change in recent years when a shocked world learned that Russia had secretly stockpiled tons of smallpox virus and manipulated it for use as a possible weapon. During that period, Moscow supported the disease's eradication. North Korea and other countries are believed to have clandestine supplies of smallpox virus as well. ''The sense was that it was out of our hands, that it was a done deal between W.H.O. and the C.D.C.,'' said Dr. Ronald Luftig of Louisiana State University, referring to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dr. Luftig is an official of the American Society for Virology and American Society for Microbiology, both of which officially support destruction of variola

UNITED NATIONS - Prompted by fears of a new outbreak of one of the world's deadliest scourges, the World Health Assembly in Geneva effectively decided Friday to defer eradicating the world's known remaining stocks of the smallpox virus until at least 2002. While virtually all member states said they remained committed to the elimination of the smallpox stocks as soon as possible, the action taken by a key committee acting on consensus, without a formal vote, reflected widespread agreement that more time is needed to study smallpox before it's irrevocably destroyed. Both Washington and Moscow have publicly opposed eradication of the virus, at least until more research is done. Though smallpox was officially declared eradicated as a disease in 1980, most officials now acknowledge there probably are clandestine smallpox stocks throughout the world, and that retaining the virus could speed the development of new drugs to fight an outbreak that occurred either naturally or as a result of bioterrorism. A turning point in official U.S. thinking about the virus's fate came in March, when an independent scientific panel concluded research on the deadly smallpox virus could provide important scientific and medical opportunities that would be lost if the virus were destroyed

Transplant surgeons who once concentrated on vital organs like hearts, livers and kidneys are branching out, transplanting an array of body parts with surprising success, and possibly heralding a day when tissues not essential to life are routinely given to others. To the astonishment of many experts, the two men recently given new hands in Lyon, France, and Louisville, Ky., are progressing well, without rejection crises. With less publicity, surgeons elsewhere have successfully performed experimental knee, larynx, trachea, femur, nerve and muscle transplants. Still, as word of the early successes spreads, doctors are beginning to stretch their imaginations. Leading transplant surgeons envision a future where they can put new faces on burn patients; give a woman new breasts, or even a uterus; transplant penises; and reconstruct jaws and neck tissues for patients with cancer, gunshot wounds, dog bites or accident injuries