Celebrities’ Appeal Turns Up Donor : Fresno Baby Rushed to Dallas, Receives a Liver Transplant

A 10-month-old boy whose plight attracted help from television star Bill Cosby, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and professional football players was in critical but stable condition today after a liver transplant operation, officials said.

Jonathan Clark of Fresno and his parents arrived at Children’s Medical Center on Thursday night and the boy entered the operating room early this morning, hospital spokeswoman Amy Morenz said.

The seven-hour surgery went well, Morenz said.

The boy had been rushed to the hospital from Virginia, where his mother and father were visiting her parents.

No information on the donor was released.

The Dallas hospital was one of three--the others were in Pittsburgh and Omaha--where Jonathan was registered as a transplant candidate.

Jonathan suffers from biliary atresia, a birth defect in which the tiny ducts that carry bile, a digestive juice, from the liver to the small intestine fail to develop properly before birth.

Without a new liver, Jonathan cannot absorb nutrients. He would starve to death without intravenous feeding.

While staying at his grandparents’ home, Jonathan was fed each night by a tube inserted through his nose and into his stomach while he slept.

During a campaign for a donor by John Clark, manager of Chandler Air Field in Fresno, Cosby, Jackson and other public figures appeared in televised appeals.