Give This Man a Hand
Forget, for a moment, the hubbub about human cloning. French surgeons on
Wednesday wrote another page of science fiction into the medical books by
sewing a dead man's hand onto a living patient. A multinational team of
doctors working in Lyon spent three and a half hours transplanting the hand
and part of an arm from a brain-dead donor to a 48-year-old Austrialian
businessman who lost his lower arm in a
logging accident almost a decade ago. [Ed. Note: In a bizarre twist, it
was later reported that the
patient actually lost his limb
using a circular saw while
incarcerated in a New Zealand
jail.] Unlike earlier attempts to replace
extremities, this operation involved the reconnection of dozens of tendons,
nerves and veins. The physicians were competing with surgeons in
Louisville, Ky., who went out on a limb in July when they announced that
they expected to perform the first such operation by year's end. It remains
to be seen whether the patient's body will reject the transplant. Even
then, it could be a year or more before he gains enough control over his
new limb to shake his doctors' hands.