After the experimental transplant was performed on Sept. 23, 1998, many doctors predicted failure, saying a body would reject the combination of skin and dozens of muscles, tendons, nerves and blood vessels in the donor arm.

The same Federal panels recommended a ban on Federal funding of experimental transplants performed with fetal tissue provided by a patient's family or friends.

If there are any remaining questions, Mr. Tsongas wrote, he will be willing to get tested at another cancer center not affiliated with Dana-Farber, the Harvard teaching hospital where he underwent the experimental transplant.

With the success of the first patient, DeVreis wanted to go on with his trials, but there were not enough funds and medical insurance was never going to pay for such an experimental transplant.

"It was the worst experience of a lifetime," said Donna Rossi, 37 years old, of New Jersey, who had an experimental autologous transplant in 1983 for lymphoma, then generally considered incurable.

The first, experimental transplant, in 1986, was intended to cure a type of lymph system cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Initially, Dr. Dubernard said he searched for a patient who was undergoing kidney dialysis and who had lost a hand, because it would have been easier to justify the experimental transplant ethically.

But throughout most of history, false teeth proved easier and less painful than such experimental transplants.

The man, Jeff Getty, passed what his doctors considered the riskiest period of the experimental transplant without experiencing any significant complications of the procedure.

In March 1988, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a temporary ban on experimental transplants of fetal tissues.