Baby Fae Doctor Cancels Talk at UCI Because of Protest Plans

Dr. Leonard Bailey, the Loma Linda University surgeon who made the historic transplant of a baboon’s heart into Baby Fae last fall, canceled a Wednesday night speaking engagement at UC Irvine after groups opposed to animal dismemberment announced protest plans.

Although two UCI officials said that they were informed Wednesday morning that Bailey was canceling “because of personal threats,” a Loma Linda University spokesman denied that any threats had been made.

“What we were told is that Dr. Leonard Bailey was canceling because of personal threats,” said Linda Granell, UCI’s director of public information.

Allison Lawton, an academic counselor in UCI’s School of Biological Sciences, which was sponsoring the Bailey talk, said she had talked to Bailey Wednesday morning.

Doctor’s Concerns

“He (Bailey) had several concerns (about speaking),” said Lawton. “He said one of the concerns was the talk was widely publicized and available to the general public rather than just to students. He also said he’d received a phone call from what he said was ‘a member of the general public’ and that the caller had offered a bullet-proof vest.” Lawton said Bailey understood the call to amount to a threat.

Bailey himself was not available for comment.

However, Dick Schaefer, community relations officer at Loma Linda University, said Wednesday afternoon that the account had somehow become confused and that Bailey had never received a threatening phone call.

Schaefer said the suggestion that Bailey wear a bullet-proof vest had actually come several days previously from the security staff of Loma Linda after the staff learned that protest groups were planning a demonstration at Bailey’s scheduled UCI talk.

“I can definitely say that Dr. Bailey got no such threatening call,” said Schaefer. “He decided to cancel because the whole tenor and atmosphere (of the audience) was different.” Schaefer said Bailey had believed he was speaking to students and faculty only, and he didn’t know until a few days ago that the general public--including anti-vivisection (animal surgery) groups--would be permitted to attend.

Medical Ethics on Agenda

Bailey’s talk, part of a nine-week biomedical sciences lecture course, was to have been on medical ethics.

Granell, the UCI spokeswoman, confirmed Wednesday that an anti-vivisection organization, Mobilization for Animals, had informed the university that it planned to stage a protest at the Bailey talk. Grinnell said the school had informed Bailey of this and had also told him that the general public would be allowed to attend his lecture. “We wanted to make sure he knew about this,” Granell said.

Schaefer said Bailey has made several scientific presentations about his Oct. 26 operation on Baby Fae, but such talks have been to medical and scientific groups.

Schaefer acknowledged that animal rights groups and some others have strongly criticized Bailey’s transplant of the baboon heart into the critically ill newborn baby. But Schaefer said that to his knowledge, Bailey has never received any threat of personal harm.

Baby Fae died on Nov. 15. She had received the animal heart transplant because she had been born with a defective heart.

Despite some criticism of the operation from individuals and groups, Bailey has said he will make another animal-heart transplant to try to save another infant’s life sometime in the future.