The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab - Hardcover

Miller, G. Wayne

2.94

18 ratings by Goodreads

9781586482428: The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586482424 ISBN 13: 9781586482428

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2005

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Dr. David H. Sachs of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital is not a household name, but within medical science, he is a giant. An immunologist and surgeon, Sachs has made significant contributions in the field of organ transplantation. But Sachs's real passion— and the possibility for a revolution in medicine—lays in xenotransplantation: using animal parts to treat sick people. "Xeno" might save the lives of untold thousands. It could also lead to a multi-billion-dollar business.

Millions of dollars have been invested in Sachs's work in the hopes of staking a lucrative claim in the future of medicine. As The Xeno Chronicles begins, Sachs's decades of work and hopes have all converged on a genetically engineered, cloned pig named Goldie, whose organs have been designed not to be rejected by their recipients. Experiments begin but just as Sachs begins to get unprecedented results, he loses his biggest financial support and the collaboration of an important outside lab. He is almost sixty-two. Time and money are starting to run out.

G. Wayne Miller's absorbing, dramatic narrative account of a brilliant scientist's attempts to achieve a breakthrough offers an illuminating look into the minds, hearts, labs, and practical realities of those on the very forefront of medical science. Based on exclusive and unprecedented inside-the-lab access, The Xeno Chronicles clarifies both how science works and the ethical issues it raises through an absorbing human story and intimate portrait of Sachs, his colleagues, and patients.

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Review:

For the 87,000 people on the waiting list for transplants in the United States alone, stem cell research leading to cloned human organs is a distant hope. Far more likely in the short run, at least according to its most passionate advocates, is xenotransplantation, or transplantation across species. Putting animal organs into humans may seem distasteful or even unethical, but in The Xeno Chronicles, G. Wayne Miller shows readers why it might be worth pursuing. The book follows the scientific trials and tribulations of Dr. David H. Sachs of the Harvard Medical School in his quest to successfully transplant into baboons the organs of a "double-knockout" pig--cloned and genetically engineered so that its DNA lacks two copies of the gene that causes its cells to be rejected by other species. Over the course of the book, Miller follows the fate of pig #15502, known as Goldie. Considering her ultimate fate, it's odd that Miller goes out of his way to relate how cute and cuddly the pig is. "Goldie passed a restful night and was happy and playful at breakfast that morning," he writes, then proceeds to describe her quiet, surgical end.

Animal rights activists likely won't appreciate how kind and gentle the animal researchers are to their subjects, and Miller gives them their say in the book. A PETA member points out that if people didn't eat so much bacon, they wouldn't need pig hearts to keep themselves alive. Still, Miller points out that the majority of patients waiting for organs did nothing to bring on their disease, and they have little choice right now but to wait--and wait--and sometimes die waiting for human donor organs. In this light, it's hard not to root for Sachs's passion for getting xenotransplantation right in a constant race against time and the medical research bureaucracy. --Therese Littleton

About the Author:

G. Wayne Miller is a staff writer at The Providence Journal . He has won numerous journalism awards, including an American Society of Newspapers Editors prize for feature writing. He is the author of six previous books, including King of Hearts , about open-heart pioneer C. Walton Lillehei, and Men and Speed.

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