AIDS Patient Set to Receive Baboon Marrow : Health: Man’s infected tissue is killed before controversial transplant.

An Oakland man dying of AIDS had his own bone marrow destroyed by radiation Thursday afternoon in preparation for a historic baboon bone marrow transplant that was scheduled for Thursday evening.

Jeff Getty, 38, has been fighting for two years to get permission for the controversial experiment, which he hopes will save his life.

“It’s about time,” Getty said in a prepared statement. “I’m lucky to still be alive.”

Getty has been undergoing a series of radiation and chemotherapy treatments all week at San Francisco General Hospital to kill off his own HIV-infected bone marrow, preparing the way for the baboon tissue that was to be infused into his bloodstream in a half-hour procedure.

Dr. Steven Deeks of UC San Francisco, Getty’s physician, hopes the baboon cells will take root in Getty’s bones and begin fighting any AIDS viruses that remain in his body. The experimental treatment is based on observations that baboons, for reasons that are not yet known, generally do not contract AIDS.

The technique was developed by Dr. Suzanne Ildstad of the University of Pittsburgh. Although baboons are closely related to humans, such a transplant would not normally be expected to succeed. Ildstad, however, has identified a blood cell, which she calls a facilitator cell, that makes a cross-species bone marrow transplant possible.

If the baboon graft does not succeed, Getty is likely to die because his own immune system, which has hitherto offered some protection against his AIDS, has been destroyed.

Critics charge that even if the transplant does succeed, Getty is likely to die from either an attack by the baboon cells, the so-called graft-versus-host disease, or infection by a baboon virus carried by the transplanted cells--even though researchers have gone to great lengths to ensure that such a transmission does not occur.

“This will probably hasten [Getty’s] death, not prevent it,” said Dr. Hugh Auchincloss Jr. of Massachusetts General Hospital.

The Humane Society of the United States has also condemned the surgery because it required killing the baboon donor.

Physicians will not know for several months whether the transplant was a success, but a failure could become obvious much sooner. Even if it succeeds, the procedure will not cure Getty of AIDS. It will simply lower the amount of HIV in his body, thereby prolonging his life.