Steven Deeks, MD, is a Professor of Medicine in Residence at UCSF and is a UCSF clinical faculty researcher specializing in HIV/AIDS. In 1995, Deeks performed a controversial operation on AIDS patient and activist, Jeff Getty, involving a transplant using bone marrow from a baboon to replace part of Getty’s bone marrow. This was one of the first animal-to-human transplants, which speaks to the urgency and desperation felt by AIDS patients, such as Getty, at this time.

Getty was a co-founder of ACT UP Golden Gate and was a prominent AIDS activist in the 1980s and 1990s. He pushed for early approval of experimental drugs and repeatedly offered himself as a guinea pig to try out new treatments while demanding access for others. Getty was a massive part of the Baboon Pilot Trial, not just as the patient, but as an advocate. He worked with doctors to develop the experimental protocols and to win approval in hopes that this daring and radical idea could help overcome the deadlock in HIV research that was leaving AIDS patients feeling hopeless for their survival. While extremely risky, Getty felt that this procedure could provide a breakthrough in the fight against AIDS and was willing to put his life on the line to do so.

This treatment was designed by Dr. Suzanne Ildstad of the University of Pittsburg Medical Center and was carried out by Steven Deeks and Paul Volberding at UCSF. The intention behind the operation was to replace some of Getty’s bone marrow with bone marrow from a baboon. Baboons were found to be immune to HIV, so the hypothesis was that the baboon’s bone marrow could potentially aid Getty’s immune system in battling AIDS.

This proposed experiment faced immense controversy and pushback from the public and from government organizations. The primary concern was that this animal-to-human transplantation, or xenotransplantation, may cause a virus from the baboon to spread to humans through the patient. Scientists argued that even with ample testing of the baboon bone marrow prior to the transplantation, there would still be a risk since we are only able to test known diseases. Undiscovered diseases in baboons could remain in the bone marrow unnoticed by the tests and could infect the patient, risking his life as well as risking another epidemic if it spread to the general population.

Getty, Deeks, and other scientists involved with this trial argued that the risk could be contained to Getty who was consenting to the operation by keeping him isolated for weeks after the transplant with heavy surveillance, monitoring, and testing. The procedure itself would also be very conservative and would not take an aggressive approach until the initial outcomes are observed. Overall, this risk was worth the possibility of saving Getty’s and other AIDS patients’ lives. Eventually, after much consideration and convincing, the FDA approved the trial.

Deeks conducted this experimental procedure at San Francisco General Hospital on December 14, 1995. Prior to the operation, Getty received small doses of radiation and chemotherapy to make room for receiving the bone marrow from the baboon. He survived the operation and did not contract any baboon-associated diseases or viruses, though monitoring would continue for the rest of his life. In the two months that followed the operation, there was no sign of baboon cells in Getty’s immune system, indicating that the transplantation failed. However, Getty’s health significantly improved after the operation, which Deeks supposed was due to the small doses of radiation and chemotherapy Getty underwent before the operation. With a more aggressive dose of radiation, Deeks presumed that the transplantation would have a higher likelihood of success, but in this trial, caution was prioritized to avoid destroying Getty’s immune system altogether.