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（丹佛）—“我做了什么？”小詹姆斯·伯顿博士不敢相信自己。
作为一名年轻的医学院学生，他采取了希波克拉底誓言，并承诺“首先，不要伤害”。
但是在这里，他故意感染了一名丙型肝炎患者。
那是3月13日，就在几小时前，他的病人Betty Huart接受了肝移植以治愈她的肝癌。但是，原本可以挽救她生命的新捐赠肝脏被这种疾病污染了，这种严重但可治愈的感染会影响肝脏。
“那天晚上我睡不好觉，”伯顿告诉美国广播公司新闻。
UCHealth的肝病学家，科罗拉多大学医学院的医学副教授Burton补充说：“但是我告诉自己……我知道我可以治愈。”
近年来，由于年轻人中阿片类药物剂量的增加，大量可用的肾脏和肝脏大量涌入。尽管这些器官感染了丙型肝炎，但它们大部分都是健康且无疤痕的。
伯顿（Burton）知道研究人员在过去五年中在丙型肝炎治疗方面取得了重大进展：现在，每天仅吃几颗药，几乎所有接受该治疗的感染者都可以在12周内治愈。
他回忆说，也许他可以将被感染的肝脏放入贝蒂体内，治愈疾病并最终挽救她的生命-根据UCHealth的说法，这是科罗拉多州的首次此类努力。
其他医疗中心也成功植入了患病器官。 2015年，约翰·霍普金斯医院成功救治了一名等待肝脏治疗三年的妇女。在向她解释了抗病毒治疗的过程后，她同意将其移植到感染了丙型肝炎的肝脏中。两个月后，该病毒被发现，她的医生说。 2017年，波士顿的百翰妇女医院也成功地将感染了丙型肝炎的心脏和肺移植到了44名患者中，经过两周的抗病毒药物治疗后，所有疾病的痕迹都无法发现。
根据美国肝脏基金会的数据，尽管美国每年进行6,000次肝移植，但仍有超过17,000人等待领取救生器官。
因此，在2018年秋天，伯顿让Huart参加了一项新研究，该研究研究了医院是否可以将丙型肝炎阳性器官移植到患者体内，然后治愈该患者。研究人员希望这项在科罗拉多大学和其他五个移植中心进行的研究能够表明，通过使用这些受污染的器官，患者可以在移植名单上花费更少的时间，并有更多的时间生活。
休亚特本人已经在肝脏移植名单上待了几个月。她在2000年代初被诊断出患有脂肪肝，后来演变为肝硬化，最后演变为肝癌。她已经用尽了所有其他路线，包括供者选择。
“我不希望像那些人那样生病。 …我只是知道那不是我想要做的，” Huart说。她于1987年因肝病去世了父亲。
她继续说：“今年11月，我将66岁。那是我父亲去世的年龄。” “那么你认为我在想什么？我在想：我只有那么多的满月，也只有那么多的流星。
丙型肝炎是通过静脉吸毒，输血或医疗设备传播的病毒。目前，在美国估计有300万人受到感染，该疾病也是肝脏移植的主要原因。
不过，Huart对丙型肝炎并不陌生。她的丈夫史蒂夫（Steve）在为海军工作时已在80年代感染了这种病毒，并花了很多年与这种毁灭性疾病作斗争。包括打针以刺激免疫系统的旧疗法仅在约40％的患者中有效，并伴有类似流感的副作用。
“这种药使他消瘦了。使他消瘦了，看起来就像只是衣架上的西装。” Huart说。
新药的发展使Huart和她的丈夫考虑了Burton的提议，但是他们的一些朋友并不那么支持这个想法。
”有人说，‘你是什么，疯子？史蒂夫经历了什么之后，你想经历那件事吗？'”史蒂夫说。
但是他们有什么选择呢？
史蒂夫解释说：“整个移植过程，简直令人难以置信。”
他继续说道：“您正在等待电话。” “每一天就像'这将是这一天吗？'，如果没有打来电话，您就上床睡觉，'哦，好一天。'[但是]我要去那儿吗？明天？还是我要完全做到？”
对于贝蒂来说，决定很明确。
“就像在悬崖的边缘。有两个孩子的母亲Huart解释说，要么您要跳过悬崖，要么要乘坐正对着您的货运列车。
她补充说：“我以为我会越过悬崖。”
2019年3月12日下午，Huart在塔吉特跑腿时接了电话。是医院打来的，告诉她要进行手术报告。他们发现了肝脏（尽管患有丙型肝炎）。
休亚特（Huart）试图不让她的希望变得渺茫-他们之前曾两次参加过医院比赛，但被告知手术不会由于一个或另一个原因而继续进行。
同时，丹佛的气温迅速下降，狂风猛烈。
瓦特（Huart）和她的丈夫在晚上8:30左右到达医院。不过到了午夜，外科医生还没有把她带回手术室。这对夫妻开始变得紧张起来。休亚特的肝脏在哪里？冬季暴风雨肆虐在外面，它还在路上吗？
“但是后来他们进来说，‘肝脏在里面！我们知道了！'” Huart回忆道。
在Huart接受手术的同时，Burton医生在医院等候区与Steve紧张地坐着。几个小时后，贝蒂带着新的肝脏和新的生命从手术室出来。
但是三天后，验血证实了预期：Huart感染了丙型肝炎。
一周之内，伯顿和他的医学专家团队就开始使用Huart进行新的口服药治疗，几天之内就无法发现这种疾病。
十二周后，Huart被正式治愈。
“每天都越来越好，” Huart告诉ABC新闻。
她继续说：“我骑自行车已经很多年了，在过去的12年中，我一直不想骑自行车。” “我太受过尝试了。”但是在手术四个月后，Huart发现自己踩了一条泥泞的小路。
“（当我骑着自行车时）我脸上的微笑并没有表现出我内心的微笑。我实际上又骑着自行车骑了，” Huart咧嘴一笑。
伯顿承认，他仍然很难缠住事实，因为曾经伤害过史蒂夫的事情实际上帮助治愈了史蒂夫的妻子。
伯顿说：“如此有效，将不再进行研究，也不会进行丙型肝炎的研究，”他希望其他需要肾脏或肝脏移植的患者会考虑丙型肝炎感染的器官。
“研究已经完成。没有更多的治疗方法了。他说：“很难有效地改善一些东西。”
版权所有©2019，ABC广播。
原文：A woman was dying of liver cancer, until a hepatitis C-infected organ saved her life
(DENVER) — “What have I done?” Dr. James R. Burton Jr. thought to himself in disbelief.
As a young medical student, he had taken the Hippocratic Oath and pledged “first, do no harm.”
But here he was, purposefully infecting one of his patients with hepatitis C.
It was March 13, and just hours before, his patient, Betty Huart, had undergone a liver transplant to cure her liver cancer. But the new, donated liver that was supposed to save her life was tainted with the disease — a serious but curable infection that affects the liver.
“I did not sleep well that night,” Burton told ABC News.
“But I told myself … I know I can cure this,” added Burton, a hepatologist at UCHealth and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Colorado University School of Medicine.
There had been an influx of available kidneys and livers in America in recent years due to the rise of opioid overdoses in young people. And while these organs were infected with hepatitis C, they were, for the most part, healthy and unscarred.
Burton knew that researchers had made significant ground in hepatitis C treatments in the last five years: Now, with just a few pills a day, nearly all people infected who took the treatment were cured in a matter of 12 weeks.
Perhaps he could put an infected liver inside Betty, cure the disease and ultimately save her life, he recalled thinking — the first such effort in Colorado, according to UCHealth.
Other medical centers had successfully implanted a diseased organ too. In 2015, Johns Hopkins hospital successfully saved a woman who has been waiting for a liver for three years. After the process of antiviral recovery was explained to her, she agreed to be transplanted with a liver infected with hepatitis C. Two months later, the virus was undetectable, her doctors said. In 2017, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston also successfully transplanted hepatitis C-infected hearts and lungs into 44 patients, and all traces of the disease were undetectable after two weeks of antiviral drug treatment.
While there are 6,000 liver transplants performed every year in America, there are still more than 17,000 people waiting to receive the life-saving organ, according to the American Liver Foundation.
So in the fall of 2018, Burton enrolled Huart in a new study that looked at whether hospitals could transplant a hepatitis C-positive organ into a patient and then cure the patient of the disease. Researchers hoped that the study, which took place at the University of Colorado and five other transplant centers, would show that by using these tainted organs, patients would spend less time on transplant lists, and more time living their lives.
Huart herself had been on the liver transplant list for several months. She was diagnosed with fatty liver disease in the early 2000s, which later evolved into cirrhosis, and finally turned into liver cancer. She had exhausted all other routes, including a living donor option.
“I did not want to get as sick as some people [on those lists]. … I just knew that that’s not what I wanted to do,” said Huart, who lost her father to liver disease in 1987.
“This November, I will be the age of 66. And that was the age [my father] died,” she continued. “So what do you think I’m thinking? I’m thinking: I’ve got only so many more full moons, only so many more shooting stars to see.”
Hepatitis C is a virus that is transmitted through intravenous drug use, blood transfusions or medical equipment. An estimated 3 million people in America are currently infected and the disease is also the leading cause for liver transplants.
Huart was no stranger to hepatitis C, though. Her husband Steve has contracted the virus back in the ’80s while working for the Navy, and spent years battling the devastating disease. The old treatment, which involved giving shots to stimulate the immune system, only worked in about 40% of patients and was associated with flu-like side effects.
“The medicine just emaciated him. Emaciated him to where he looked like he was just a suit on a hanger,” said Huart.
New drug advancements made Huart and her husband consider Burton’s offer, but a few of their friends weren’t so supportive of the idea.
“Some said, ‘What are you, nuts? After what Steve went through, you want to go through with that?'” said Steve.
But what choice did they have?
“The whole transplant process, it’s just mind boggling,” explained Steve.
“You live waiting for a phone call,” he continued. “Every day is like ‘Is this going to be the day?’ And if the phone call doesn’t come, you go to bed going, ‘Oh, well another day.’ [But] am I going to make it to the next day? Or am I going to make it at all?”
For Betty, the decision was clear.
“It was like being at the edge of a cliff. Either you’re going to jump over the cliff, or you’re going to take that freight train that’s running right at you,” explained Huart, a mother of two.
“I thought I’d jump over the cliff,” she added.
On the afternoon on March 12, 2019, Huart answered her phone while running errands in Target. It was the hospital calling, telling her to report for surgery. They had found a liver (albeit with hepatitis C).
Huart tried not to get her hopes up – they had already raced to the hospital twice before, only to be told that the surgery wouldn’t go forward for one reason or another.
Meanwhile, Denver’s temperature was dropping rapidly and an intense storm raged.
Huart and her husband arrived at the hospital around 8:30 p.m. By midnight, though, the surgeon still hadn’t taken her back to the operating room. The couple started to get nervous. Where was Huart’s liver? Was it still en route, with the winter storm raging outside?
“But then they came in and said, ‘The liver’s in! We got it!'” recalled Huart.
While Huart was transferred to surgery, Dr Burton sat nervously with Steve in the hospital waiting area. Several hours later, Betty emerged from the operating room with a new liver and a new lease on life.
But three days later, blood tests confirmed the expected: Huart had contracted hepatitis C.
Within a week, Burton and his team of medical professionals started Huart on her new oral pill treatment and within a few days, the disease was undetectable.
Twelve weeks later, and Huart was officially cured.
“Every day just gets better and better,” Huart told ABC News.
“I rode a bike for many years, and for the last 12 years, I have not wanted to ride a bicycle,” she continued. “I was just too tried.” But four months after surgery, Huart found herself pedaling down a dirt-covered trail.
“The smile on my face [when I rode that bike] doesn’t do the smile that was going on in my mind. That I was actually on a bike again and riding,” said Huart, breaking into a grin.
Burton admitted he still found it difficult to wrap his head around the fact that something that once hurt Steve actually helped cure Steve’s wife.
“It’s so effective that there will be no more studies, no more research with hepatitis C,” said Burton, who hopes other patients in need of kidney or liver transplants will consider a hepatitis C-infected organ.
“The research is done. There’s no more treatments coming. It’s hard to improve on something that is [so] effective,” he added.
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