TYING your shoelaces and throwing a baseball don鈥檛 sound like very remarkable
achievements鈥攗nless you do them with somebody else鈥檚 hand. One year after
a 37-year-old man had his missing left hand replaced with that of a donor who
died aged 58, he can now use it to throw a ball or write a letter.
That鈥檚 largely due to the carefully judged combination of anti-rejection
drugs he received, a team of surgeons based at the University of Louisville
School of Medicine in Kentucky reports in The New England Journal of
Medicine (vol 343, p 468). Having survived a bout of cytomegalovirus
disease brought on by his immunosuppressed state, the patient has now started to
sense pressure, pain and temperature in the transplanted hand.