In this issue of The Journal two articles, one from Pittsburgh, Pa,1 and one from Chicago, Ill,2 report four clinical transplant experiences (two cases each) that involve the partial surgical evisceration of desperately ill children and the replacement of severely damaged vital abdominal organs from cadaver sources, under immunosuppressive chemotherapy.
Further application of cadavaric transplant techniques to new vascularized organs is an inevitable extension of a series of operations—organ transplantations—formerly thought impossible. These organ transplantations commenced in the early 1950s, and with the addition of immunosuppressive chemotherapy in the early 1960s, they have now brought relief of suffering to hundreds of thousands of people over the world. The successful allotransplantation of vascularized vital organs under immunosuppressive chemotherapy must be regarded as one of the greatest advances in biomedical science in the second half of this century. In every instance, the extension of this method to organs beyond the