The One-In-Six-Billion Girl

Australian Teen's Transplant Transforms Her Immune System In Never-Seen-Before Way

(CBS)  What are the odds that any transplant patient could end up like Demi Brennan of Sydney, Australia? Next to impossible.

"I feel like a normal person," she said.

She's 15 now, but six years ago she had a liver transplant - major surgery but pretty routine. What happened next, some people are calling a miracle.

"We didn't believe her," said Dr. Stephen Alexander. "We thought that this was just too strange an occurrence to occur."

Most patients have to take strong medications to prevent their bodies from rejecting donated tissue. But Demi's body not only accepted the donated liver, it actually adopted the immune system - even the blood type of the donor.

"When it was first brought by the lab staff to my colleague and said 'this girl's blood group's gone from 0-negative to 0-positive,' first of all, we thought we must have made a mistake," said Hematologist Dr. Julie Curtin.

It's never happened before.

"We think she's a one-in-six-billion kind of a girl," Alexander said.

Somehow she did what doctors have been trying to do ever since they started performing transplants, get the body to stop trying to reject donated organs.

"The holy grail of transplant was achieved and that's what we were trying to achieve for everybody, but Demi's body had done that herself," Curtin said.

So now doctors will be studying her case to see if they can unlock the secrets of Demi's astonishing achievement.

"It's my second chance at life," Demi said.

She looks and says she feels just like any other healthy 15-year-old girl - purple hair, green nails ... and feeling in the pink.

[Wookiee-1138]

Incredible. Is she related to Sherry Birkin?

[susieq_13]

Amazing story!

[expatriate07]

Very cool. My dad needs a liver. But I doubt he''ll ever get one thanks to the awesome health care system in the USA. Praise Mammon!

[johngoodnews]

Every now and then something truly beyond our understanding quietly takes the stage--and the world shifts to a new set of rules. Please take care of this precious human being.

[madashell4lo]

If the scientific community does not jump on this like white on rice they are missing our best chance to develop possible unimaginable cures for everything from rejection to hangnails. As they have stated this could be our one in six billion chance for a whole new field in medicine. This could be the beginning of the end of the drug companies strangle hold on the human animal. The drug companies will fight any and all attempts to understand this miracle, and they will fight as dirty as they have on stem cell research. This child must be protected at all costs. The last thing a drug company wants is a cure for anything. If this places rejection drugs on the useless list, the drug companies will lose millions in this area alone.

[timothyone-2009]

She looks so cute and sweet. What a wonderful story!

[grazinggoat]

Through the miracle of existence, she may have switched on, a dormant sequence of DNA, coding for or silencing the Protein attributing the Rhesus character + or -.

-Pretty sure she is another variation of the Mammal Human Sapiens specie. All gives hope for humanity regarding survival, in case of major decimation. It''s called survival mechanism and evolution.

[runningralph]

If scientists could figure out how this happened it would be a great breakthrough. Organs could be harvested from animals for human use. Could one man''s brain be put into another''s body? Maybe the sci-fi writers were right!

[boston1954]

Terrific story!!!! It is wonderful to see pieces such as this. Thanks so much for letting us know about this remarkable and lucky young lady.