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The Xeno Chronicles
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Product Description
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.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1972154 in Books
- Published on: 2005-05-04
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Amazon.com
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
From Publishers Weekly
Don't get too attached to Goldie, the baby pig traveling with her teddy bear in the opening pages of Miller's behind-the-scenes look at Harvard's experiments in xenotransplantation, cross-species organ transplants. She's been specially bred to create body parts that won't be automatically rejected by other species, and before too long her heart and kidneys will be given to baboons so scientists can monitor their viability. Xenotransplantation (xeno for short) has the potential to radically transform medical practice, and Miller (who wrote about the early days of open-heart surgery in King of Hearts) notes the financial stake pharmaceutical companies have in this research. But he focuses on the human issues, delving into doctors' motivations and thoughtful reactions to charges of torture by animal-rights activists. As Miller describes, every effort is made to minimize the animals' suffering, but the researchers' overriding concern is improving the quality of human lives. That sentiment is echoed by a woman desperately awaiting a suitable heart for transplant and a long-time dialysis patient, both enthusiastic at the prospect of readily available organs, whatever the source. Some personalities come more alive than others, such as Dr. David Sachs, the lab's jolly, optimistic head, but Miller always keeps readers' attention focused squarely on the hopes being placed on this research.
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From Booklist
It takes a certain chutzpah to tackle a topic as provocative of passionate controversy as xenotransplantation--that is, transplanting organs between species--but when Miller puts the face of noted Harvard physician David H. Sachs on the practice, it becomes somewhat less polarizing. Though not much. Animal-rights activists raise several serious arguments against it. The U.S. Department of Public Health has huge concerns. Even a pioneer of it, surgeon Leonard L. Bailey, who gave Baby Fae a baboon heart in 1984, equivocates. Add to such arguments the problems Sachs and his cohorts encounter trying to obtain funding for the extremely costly (and not yet lucrative) experimental procedure, and the xenotransplantation story has the makings of a Hollywood problem-picture blockbuster. Those interested in the thorny ethics involved will profit from Miller's tracing of xenotransplantation history, which spans centuries; from his interviews with seriously ill patients awaiting human organs; and from his account of two years of shadowing Sachs through several pig-to-primate transplant surgeries. Thought-provoking reading. Donna Chavez
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