Father & Son

Eleven-year-old Robert Bruce Lawrence of Oakland, Calif, had recovered from a skull fracture (the result of being knocked off his bike by a motorist). But soon he fell ill again. He ran a slight fever, and became noticeably bloated. His illness was diagnosed as kidney disease. For two months Bobby was in & out of Permanente Hospital.

When conventional treatment failed to clear up his condition, the doctors decided that Bobby should have a cross transfusion--a daring technique (TIME, June 13) of interchanging his blood with that of a healthy donor. The donor's kidneys were supposed to do some of the work which Bobby's were failing tb do, and thus give the ailing organs a chance to mend.

Both of Bobby's parents volunteered as donors. After tests for blood type and other factors, the doctors chose his father, Sidney Lawrence, a healthy man of 40. All the signs were favorable.

For three hours, father & son lay on hospital beds side by side, their blood vessels connected at the groin by an ingenious arrangement of tubes, valves and pump. Said a hospital spokesman: "It was the smoothest case of the kind we have had." Bobby seemed better at once. In a week he went home and was soon up & around. Following routine, his father was kept in the hospital to make sure that he had suffered no harm. At first, as is usual, he ran a slight fever, but he quickly recovered. Sidney Lawrence was about to be discharged when he developed severe liver and kidney trouble. Last week, 13 days after the transfusion, he died.

Doctors and technicians at Permanente made a searching post-mortem examination. This week, their conclusion was that some unknown protein factor in the boy's blood caused an explosive reaction in the father's kidneys and liver. Such a mischance, they said, could just as easily result from an ordinary injection or from any other treatment in which a foreign substance is introduced into the bloodstream.

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