The controversial attempt to save a newborn with a baboon heart
In 1984, surgeon Leonard Lee Bailey performed a medical experiment that shocked the world. This video explores the bizarre story of Baby Fae and the desperate search for solutions to the global organ shortage.
The history of transplantation changed forever on 3 December 1967, when Christiaan Barnard completed the first successful human heart transplant. Although the recipient, Louis Washkansky, died 18 days later from pneumonia, the procedure opened a new era of medicine. Today, over 5,000 transplants occur annually, but the primary challenge is no longer surgical skill or rejection, but the scarcity of donated organs.
This shortage is particularly severe for infants, who rarely experience the types of injuries that leave organs intact. This scarcity led to the controversial October 1984 attempt by Leonard Lee Bailey to implant a newborn girl, known as Baby Fae, with the heart of a baboon.
Source: The Baby With the Baboon Heart
