WASHINGTON _ Late Thursday night AIDS activistJeff Getty was scheduled to undergo the first transplant ofbaboon bone marrow cells into a human, a procedure thathas unleashed considerable controversy about its risk topublic health.

The procedure was to be performed in San FranciscoGeneral Hospital, affiliated with the University ofCalifornia, San Francisco. The xenotransplant wasapproved by the FDA last August.

Last month the FDA and Centers for Disease Control andPrevention, in Atlanta, raised the issue of whether thebaboon transplant would introduce an unknown pathogeninto the human population. (See BioWorld Today, Dec. 1,1995, p. 1.)

The transplant was hotly debated at an FDA advisorypanel meeting last summer when the possibility that theso-called foamy virus from the baboon could beunleashed. (See BioWorld Today, July 17, 1995, p. 1.)

The transplant holds promise because baboons areresistant to HIV-1, the primary AIDS virus. Theexpectation is that infusion of the baboon bone marrowcells into the patient's bone marrow cells will produceHIV-resistant CD4 T-cells. _ Michele L. Robinson

(c) 1997 American Health Consultants. All rights reserved.