Positivity: Twins Recall World First
12.06.2007
Jon VINCENT met up with his identical twin Tim this month — after years apart — and in Masterton celebrated the medical miracle that saved his life a decade earlier.
Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the first day of a world-first stem cell transplant involving the brothers that within three weeks had forced into remission an aggressive cancer that was killing Jon.
Eight-and-a-half-million stem cells were harvested from Tim, now 44, and transplanted into Jon, who had undergone intense radiation treatment to utterly deplete his immune system in the lead-up to the therapy.
In 1983 Jon had been diagnosed HIV-positive and was the sixth foreigner in America officially recognised with the condition.
It was his HIV practitioner Cassie Workman who had suggested the pioneering procedure.
The therapy was conducted at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, where both brothers were then living, after Jon was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma that was attacking 18 locations in his body, including the back of his left eye and the base of his brain.
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