The Region - News from Feb. 1, 1985

Doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center are still trying to determine whether Baby Fae’s Nov. 15 death was due to rejection of her baboon heart or to toxicity caused by improper dosages of drugs administered to prevent a rejection. Dr. Jack Provonsha, director of the university’s Center of Christian Bioethics, said in a speech that the cause of month-old infant’s death “was obviously not a heart rejection.” Instead, Provonsha said, he believes that she died as a result of “some kind of toxic phenomenon” caused by medication to prevent her immune system from rejecting the organ. A hospital statement said that autopsy findings were “not typical of the usual graft rejection seen in cardiac transplantation episodes. . . . Because the picture does not look like classical rejection, the final autopsy report is not yet complete.”