Posted on 01/14/2002 8:39:20 PM PST by jo6pac
Australian family dumbfounded by Hallam's hand request
PERTH, Jan 15
Australian relatives of the world's first hand transplant patient, Clint Hallam, today said they were dumbfounded to learn he wanted another hand.
Mr Hallam made headlines in 1998 when surgeons transplanted a hand from a brain dead French motorcyclist.
He hit the news again in February 2001 when he asked for the hand to be amputated.
Now his surgeons say the 51-year-old New Zealand-born former Perth resident, who lost his own hand 17 years ago in a prison accident, has changed his mind and wants another hand.
Mr Hallam's close relative, who asked not to be named, said she and her mother were dumbfounded to learn he wanted another hand.
"I'm shocked, dumbfounded really," she said.
"I can't believe he'd do it."
She said she had not heard from Mr Hallam, who she believed was living in France.
Mr Hallam's last visa application to visit Australia had been rejected by authorities, she said.
Mr Hallam thwarted Australian police last year by leaving the country before NSW police could contact him over a number of fraud allegations.
He made medical history when a team of surgeons in Lyon grafted the donor hand onto his forearm.
But he infuriated his doctors by regularly losing contact with them and refusing to follow necessary drug treatment required to prevent his body rejecting the transplant.
When he asked for the grafted hand to be removed he said his body had rejected the hand and that he had become "mentally detached from it".
Now, however, he apparently wants to try again.
"Hallam sent an e-mail to (surgeon) Nadey Hakim asking for a new hand to be grafted," Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, who led the team that carried out the surgery, said in Lyon yesterday.
Mr Hakim is a London-based member of the team.
Prof Dubernard indicated Hallam had missed his chance.
French medical authorities have decided that only transplant operations considered vital should be carried out, for instance on a patient who has lost both arms.
Psychologist Gabriel Bourloud said Hallam likely became so used to living with one hand that he lacked the will to complete the difficult and lengthy process of adapting to his transplant.
"Hallam was not motivated during his physiotherapy and did not take his medicine, so his hand suffered," Bourloud said.
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