California surgeon who transplanted baboon heart into infant ‘Baby Fae’, dies at age 76

Dr. Leonard Bailey, the surgeon who controversially transplanted the heart of a baboon into an infant called Baby Fae in 1984, then performed the first successful human infant-to-infant heart transplant the next year, died Sunday, Loma Linda University announced.

He was 76 and had cancer, the university said on its website.

Bailey’s work at what was then called Loma Linda University Medical Center “spawned human-to-human infant heart transplants and other cardiac treatment breakthroughs,” the university said.

He went on to transplant human hearts in 376 infants, was recognized as “an authority on congenital heart surgery” and was a consultant to physicians around the world, Loma Linda said in a statement

Although he performed scores of procedures throughout his career, few generated as much controversy or debate as his attempt to implant a baboon heart into a terminally ill infant

“It’s pretty clear that the experience of Baby Fae was an indelible experience for Loma Linda University,” Bailey said during a speech at the school in March 2009. “It certainly was for my life.”

One year after the Baby Fae surgery, Bailey successfully performed the first infant-to-infant heart transplant on Baby Moses — later identified as Eddie Anguiano. Five years after the surgery his mother Maria told The Associated Press, ″He’s doing really good. I send him to school so they can wear him out for me.″

The Baby Fae procedure was not without criticism: An American Medical Association editorial in 1985 said the procedure was bound to fail because of inherent incompatibility between the species. ”It also seems that the belief that the infant`s immune system was immature and thus more readily immunosuppressed was wishful thinking,” the editorial said.

Baby Fae lived for 21 days after receiving the baboon heart on Oct. 26, 1984 during a procedure by Bailey and his team at the medical center in Loma Linda. She survived two weeks longer than any previous recipient of such a transplant.

The same critical AMA editorial said keeping the infant alive for three weeks was a major technical feat. Animal rights activists also protested the procedure.

Stephanie Fae Beauclair was born in Barstow three weeks premature with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a fatal condition in which the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped. The infant’s mother’s choice was to have her daughter die in a hospital or at home, according to a Time magazine article on the 31st anniversary of the surgery.

Bailey believed the child, who was otherwise healthy, had a chance with a heart transplant. But with no human infant heart available, he received permission from the mother for the baboon transplant procedure. Bailey at that time had done seven years of research into transplants from other species.

Bailey was distinguished professor of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery and of pediatrics at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and surgeon-in-chief at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital. He served at the Seventh-day Adventist institution for a total of 42 years.

“When we operate on these babies, the hope is that they will live longer than us. It’s nice to know that’s playing out,” Bailey said in 2017 after a 36-year-old former patient visited him. “Often when we start a case we thank the Almighty that He has put us in this position to help and that the outcomes will be according to His will,” the university quoted him as saying.

Leonard Lee Bailey was born on Aug. 28, 1942, in Takoma Park, Maryland, and graduated from the nearby Columbia Union College (now Washington Adventist University) in 1964, according to the online obituary.

He earned his medical degree at Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1969.

During his surgical residence at Toronto’s Hospital For Sick Children in the 1970s, he saw what would be otherwise healthy babies die from hypoplastic left heart syndrome. That spurred his research, when he returned to Loma Linda University as an assistant professor at the school of medicine in 1976, to research transplants in infant research animals.

He is survived by his two sons, Brooks and Connor. His wife Nancy, a graduate of the Loma Linda University School of Nursing, died April 7.

A memorial service was being planned, along with how to make a donation in Bailey’s honor, the university said.

Staff writer Eric Licas contributed to this story.