NYT19981218.0482 NEWS STORY 12/18/1998 22:35:00
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BC-CALIF-KIDNEY-DEBATE-535&ADD-NYT CLAIMING HEALING BY GOD, GIRL SAYS KIDNEY IS FINE (lb) &QL; &UR; By EVELYN NIEVES &LR; &QC; &QL; &UR; c.1998 N.Y. Times News Service &LR; &QC; &QL; SAN FRANCISCO _ Two weeks ago, Renada Daniel Patterson's only kidney, donated by her father, began to fail, prompting a swirling debate when he offered to give her his remaining one. But on Friday, even as the medical ethics committee at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center was discussing whether to allow a transplant that would make David Patterson a dialysis patient for the rest of his life, his 16-year-old daughter and her mother announced that the debate was moot: Renada had been healed by God. ``Renada is healthy now,'' said her mother, Vickie Daniel. ``She's happy and well.'' But Renada's pediatric nephrologist, Dr. Donald Potter, has a more sober prognosis. While medication has stabilized Renada's condition, Potter does not believe she is cured, Janet Basu, a spokeswoman for the medical center, said. ``When Renada entered the hospital on December 2, her condition was good,'' Ms. Basu said. ``She was released on December 6 after treatment to prevent rejection. The results so far have been encouraging. ``This is not a cure, Ms. Basu said. ``It doesn't mean that she won't need a transplant sometime in the future. The same condition exists as two weeks ago. She didn't need a transplant; she didn't need dialysis. But sometime in the future, she will need these things.'' Mrs. Daniel had pushed hard for her daughter's right to take her father's last kidney. Patterson, an inmate at California State Prison in Sacramento who abandoned Renada when she was a baby, was offering her the best gift a father could, Mrs. Daniel had said. Besides, she said, ``we don't know how much time Renada's got left.'' Now, she said, it seems as if Renada is fine. At a news conference on Friday at the hospital, the University of California-San Francisco Stanford Health Care, where she made her stunning announcement, she said that blood tests showed that Renada's kidney appeared to be functioning normally, and that her doctor said she would not be needing a transplant or dialysis. The family's pastor, the Rev. Lorenzo Carlisle of the Oakland United Church of Christ, called it ``a supernatural phenomenon, a gift that God has given us for the world to see.'' Renada was born with one kidney, which failed when she was 5. Her body rejected a transplant a year later, and for seven years she was a dialysis patient. Then, three years ago, her father, who had not been in touch for years, called from prison to offer her one of his kidneys. The transplant worked until Renada stopped taking her anti-rejection medication because it bloated her, caused a hump in her back and made her feel ill. At the university medical center, the ethics committee has been saddled with the unprecedented situation of authorizing a transplant that would appear to violate the Hippocratic oath that requires doctors to ``first, do no harm'' to patients. Dr. Wade Smith, the chairman of the ethics committee, said on Friday that the committee was pleased to hear from Mrs. Daniel that Renada was doing well, but that the committee would continue its discussions, and would meet in January more than once before making a recommendation. (STORY CAN END HERE _ OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS) Medical scholars nationwide have been divided over the ethics of accepting Patterson's offer for another transplant. Some are categorically against it; others say it depends on how it would affect Patterson's life. There is also debate over whether Patterson's status as an inmate should be considered, since he would still be an inmate if the transplant occurred before 2003. Patterson, 38, is serving time for burglary and drug convictions. (In 1997, his original sentence of seven years for burglary was lengthened by five years after he was found with heroin in his cell.) In the two weeks since Mrs. Daniel first held a news conference admonishing the hospital, University of California-San Francisco Stanford Health Care, for even debating the transplant issue, she has been criticized on radio and television talk shows for insisting that the transplant be allowed. NYT-12-18-98 2235EST