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immobile: he could not walk even a few steps. Iacono had to carry him off the train; then he was put on a tricycle and wheeled to a waiting car.
    Neither man had ever been to mainland China before, and Iacono was unprepared for the primitive conditions that existed at the Zhengzhou cancer hospital. There was no heat or hot water, for example, and the equipment was rudimentary. The microscopes, which were crucial for the dissection of the foetal tissue, didn’t even have built-in light sources. Like children’s microscopes in the West, they simply had little mirrors that you aimed at a window.
    Another surprise had to do with money. According to Kay, the doctors, at the Zhengzhou hospital, or the hospital administrators, demanded a substantial fee – she thought it was in the range of $20,000 to $25,000 – to let the operation go ahead. Don said that Max told him the fee was close to the annual operating budget for the hospital. ‘I think they knew what they had,’ Kay commented, meaning that they had Max over a barrel. ‘Bob was a little taken aback.’
    One expectation was fulfilled, however: according to Iacono, foetal tissue was readily available. ‘I’d say, “I need some things to dissect, guys, because I haven’t had any practice in my country, bring me some stuff.” And it would be, “You need foetal? OK, no problem.” And a couple of hours later they’d bring me something, and I’d say, “Where did you find that?” and it was, “Oh, in the dustbin.”’
    In a medical paper describing the case, Iacono said that the samples used for the actual transplantations were obtained in accordance with US National Institute of Health guidelines, which would include obtaining the mother’s consent to the use of the tissue for transplantation. Max told Don that a female gynaecologist rode through nearby villages on a bicycle, telling people what she was looking for. If so, she would presumably have had the opportunity to explain the planned use of the tissue to the women who had the abortions, and to get their agreement.
    Some other research groups who were doing foetal-cell transplants, such as Curt Freed’s, made an effort to tissue-match the foetal tissue to the recipient, at least at the relatively crude level of the ABO system (the system of antigens commonly known as ‘blood groups’, but actually present in all tissues). Iacono did not tell me whether he did this, but it is unlikely that the Zhengzhou hospital had either the facilities or the expertise to carry out such an analysis. If they didn’t, the compatibility of the foetal tissue with Truex’s own tissue would be pretty much a hit-or-miss affair. Iacono simply assumed that the tissue would be a mismatch, and he started Truex on immunosuppressant drugs – specifically, steroids and a drug called cyclosporin. The hope was that these drugs would prevent Truex’s body from rejecting the transplanted tissue, and he would need to continue to take them for the rest of his life.
    Having taken these preliminary steps, Iacono started the transplant procedure, which consisted of three separate operations. On the first day, he took tissue from a foetus that he judged to be 16 weeks old. It’s now known that dopamine cells from foetuses this old survive poorly after transplantation – by this age, they have largely or entirely lost their ability to survive in a new host – but at the time that may not have been so clear. At any rate, having obtained the foetal tissue, Iacono opened Truex’s scalp and pushed fragments of the tissue down the implanted catheter that led to the striatum on the right side. Then he removed the catheter and closed the scalp incision. It was a very brief operation.
    A day or so later Iacono repeated the procedure, again using tissue from a 16-week-old foetus. This time he implanted the tissue in Truex’s left striatum, using a somewhat different technique: he loaded the tissue into a small, spring-shaped metal coil and