Ledger DC Journal - News, Politics & Crime

Baby Fae received her controversial heart transplant twnety-five years ago. The Baby Fae baboon donor was a hospital research animal and it was dubbed a miracle at the time, and now, 314 children receive heart transplants per year.

Stephanie Fae Beauclair was a premature baby and suffered a condition known as hypoplastic left-heart syndrome. It was untreatable.


InteliHealth has the details, "On this date in 1984, doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, led by Dr. Leonard Bailey, transplanted the heart of a young baboon into the 14-day-old child, who was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or a partially developed heart."

"Doctors had worried that without the transplant, the child likely would have survived only a few days to a few weeks. With the baboon's heart, Baby Fae ended up living three weeks. She died on Nov. 16, 1984. Only four other patients, all adults, had received animal heart transplants before Baby Fae; none had lived longer than three and a half days."