Baby Fae, baboon heart recipient.

1984: The world holds its collective breath as Baby Fae, an infant born prematurely with a malformed heart, receives a heart from a baboon. She lives for almost three weeks—longer than any other recipient of a heart xenotransplant—but then rejects the organ, due to a blood type incompatibility (Fae was type O; the baboon, type B).

Although it didn’t save Baby Fae, cyclosporine—the granddaddy of immunosuppressive drugs—is gaining widespread use for human transplants. By the end of the 1980s, newer and even more powerful immunosuppressive drugs, including FK506, come into vogue.