One thing that has really changed our view of the world as a whole is the field of medicine. It’s not very long ago that the children born with heart defects were given a few days to live. Baby Fae’s heart transplant was nothing less than a miracle. 25th October, 2009 was the silver jubilee of that land mark surgery.

Stephanie Fae Beauclair was a premature baby and she had hypoplastic left-heart syndrome- an untreatable condition resulting from her premature birth at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Nobody has ever performed a heart transplant operation, let alone on babies and scientific data was lacking on the subject to say the least. There was no way Baby Fae could survive. Dr. Leonard Bailey sifted through medical literature but couldn’t find the precedent on treating babies like Baby Fae. Meanwhile clock was ticking for the child. Without her heart working properly, she was losing rosy color of her cheeks fast, Dr. Bailey had to come with an innovative idea ———fast or it would be too late.

Meanwhile German pharmacologists were working on an antifungal Cyclosporin. Cyclosporine had shown some interesting properties in clinical trials. The substance toned down the immune system just enough to let the transplanted organ survive in the foreign body. Cyclosporine was also the answer to Dr. Bailey’s dilemma. 12 days had passed since Baby Fae had opened her eyes in this world. A heart transplant was planned. It was impossible to find a human heart at such a short notice and yet the heart was needed, well at once. A baboon heart was prepared to be transplanted into the Baby Fae’s body.

As Baby Fae opened her eyes after the transplant, world was taken into a blitz. Global media had just one topic to report about Dr. Bailey and baby Fae. Media frenzy made it impossible for Dr. Bailey to take rest; it was just reporters or hospital for him.

Baby Fae survived for remarkable 21 days. As she developed multi organ failure – her HEART was the last organ to succumb. The surgery gave medical world much needed data on transplants and especially heart transplants. Further transplant efforts relied very heavily on that remarkable surgery.

Baby Fae by sacrificing her life has given life to thousands of children like her worldwide.

Baby Fae