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Science

Surgeon Says Face Transplants a Reality 248

Posted by michael from the slice-and-dice dept.
Aspherical Cow writes "A New York Times Magazine article about how a London surgeon is planning on performing an experimental full-face transplant. The face would be harvested like any other donor organ and used on a disfigured person. Lots of issues of identity come up with something like this, but they say that this won't turn Nicholas Cage into John Travolta."
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Surgeon Says Face Transplants a Reality More

Surgeon Says Face Transplants a Reality

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  • FP w/useful info (Score:4, Informative)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:32AM (#5470676)
    FP! oh, and the link is broken. nytimes is suposed to be followed by '.com'.

  • GREAT! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:34AM (#5470681)
    This really is good news! I want one!

    This face has a few holes in :(

  • This is great. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:34AM (#5470682)
    Maybe now people like Jacqueline Saburido [www.hot.ee] can have their lives restored to them.

    Oh, FP?

    • What a shame. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Compact Dick ( 518888 )

      True, death is not the worst that could happen to you. But I feel she needs more than just a face transplant.

      At least it's a start.

      *sigh*

    • More info. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Compact Dick ( 518888 )

      about Jacqueline [austin360.com].

  • Yup (Score:2)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 )
    Face it, it's just another body part.

  • Correct Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Captain Chad ( 102831 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:37AM (#5470686) Homepage
    HERE [nytimes.com]

  • Whole new meaning ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:39AM (#5470691) Homepage
    Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "Your face, your ass - what's the difference?"

    • You must mean "my face, your ass."

      Oh, wait...!

    • skin grafting (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:25AM (#5470835)
      To a certain degree, you're right, but differences in skin do exist, depending on body location.

      Some skin is hair-bearing, some has different sweat glands, some is thicker, and some has more or fewer nerve endings. For instance, the skin on your elbows has far fewer nerve endings than the skin of the lip.

      It sounds like the surgeon is simply doing a large, complex skin graft... that's something burn surgeons have been doing for years. Burn surgeons use a device called a dermatome... in essence a large electric shaver that you can set to shave off very precise depths of skin (to thousandths of an inch) to achieve a split-thickness graft. It's worth noting that skin grafts for burn victims are often meshed to cover a larger area (if you are burned >95% of your body, there isn't much to work with, so you have to make every bit count). The cosmetic results are nowhere near normal skin, but the primary purpose of a graft in a burn patient is to reestablish the protection that intact skin gives you. Absence of skin not only makes you extremlely vulnerable to death from infection, it also causes you to evaporate off enormous amounts of fluid, resulting in rapid dehydration. Cosmesis is often secondary to simply saving a person's life... it's not pretty, but it works. If you were burned, and your ass was spared, you can be damned sure the burn surgeon would harvest the bejeesus out of your ass to cover the rest of you...

      I'd be interested to know how he's selecting his patients, and whether he'll do these transplants on smokers. There are some plastic surgeons that won't do skin grafts on a smoker, since the act of smoking can actually lower your capillary oxygen transport enough to endanger the survival of a skin graft.

      I'd also be interested in knowing the surgical technique he's planning on using to harvest the skin. Clearly he'll have to do it by hand, use a bit of microsurgery to reconnect the vessels... I can see this being a looong procedure.

      I'd probably donate my face, if someone else needed it and I didn't (I'd donate it, just like any other "organ"... and their different bone structure should destroy any resemblance).

      Now whether someone would actually *want* my face... wow, I don't know... they'd have to be pretty desperate...

      • Re:skin grafting (Score:5, Informative)

        by Isldeur ( 125133 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @11:37AM (#5471217)
        It sounds like the surgeon is simply doing a large, complex skin graft... that's something burn surgeons have been doing for years.

        Um, no. But thanks for your discussion on skin types. This operation (and I believe the surgeon is Irish actually, just working in London) is much much more complex. It involves a lot more careful work, both with the placement of the folding lines as well as reattachment of the loads of muscles and nerves, including both the facial (CN VII) and trigeminal (CN V) cranial nerves.

        Burn surgeons use a device called a dermatome... in essence a large electric shaver that you can set to shave off very precise depths of skin (to thousandths of an inch)

        While I don't know the surgeon's exact approach, I am certain they are not using those razors. It's the entire facial skin they're transplanting, not shavings of it.
        • He might be transplanting the entire face "enbloc" including nerves, muscles, etc, but this is fraught with potential problems. Where reattaching blood vessels is relatively straightforward with standard microsurgical techniques, reattaching nerves is a much less certain proposition. I would expect the surgeon to pay close attention to skin tension lines... any plastic surgeon that didn't has no business calling himself a plastic surgeon.

          Injured nerves, whether they be contused, or cleanly cut, regenerate very slowly if at all. You may not get full function back, and often will have parasthesias and neuropathy, even with a successful reattachment. I am not a neurosurgeon, but as I recall, realigning and reattaching the epineureum is the most important part of the procedure... simply aligning the nerve fibers and putting a stitch through them is not enough.

          The blood vessels (facial artery, etc) would be the easy part; free flap grafts are done all the time. Reattaching nerves from another person and getting full function back... that's a much more difficult trick.

  • Identity theft? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, I can't see how there would be any identity issues...I haven't read the article, but I can't imagine that anything would be transplanted besides the skin (and maybe some cartilage). The recipiants original bone structure would remain the same...

    • Re:Identity theft? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ocelotbob ( 173602 )
      Well, if you had read the article, you'd learn that you're only partially right. They'd take more than just the skin -- they'd also take some of the underlying muscles and bone mass, to try to meet halfway, so to speak, in the reconstruction job. The end result would be a person who doesn't look like they used to, but doesn't look like the donor either.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:41AM (#5470694)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • it's not the face .... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:41AM (#5470696)
    ... transplants that are going to make a lot of money.

    It's the scalp transplants that will make bazillions. Just think, you can get a whole new type of hair or just have your scalp cloned and slice out the male pattern baldness.

    I would pay for that.

  • consequences (Score:2, Interesting)

    by awing0 ( 545366 )
    A lot of study has been put into what beauty really is. If you look at it from an evolutionary point of view, it's to show us which mates would best carry our genes.

    When you change someone's face, you can't help but wonder if you're throwing a wrench into a system thats evolved over so many thousands of years. This argument would apply not only to this, but plastic surgery and what not.

    It seams every day, medical technology is weakening the race more and more by causing people to depend on a large infrastructure to survive. At what point do you draw the line between leaving people out in the cold for the greater good or helping them?

    • Re:consequences (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09, 2003 @06:52AM (#5470796)
      "It seams every day, medical technology is weakening the race more and more by causing people to depend on a large infrastructure to survive. At what point do you draw the line between leaving people out in the cold for the greater good or helping them?"

      This is an incredibly specious argument. Seriously, put a little thought into it. ...

      OK, now that we've determined that you aren't willing to put thought into it, I'll do it for you. Why do we have such a long lifespan and low infant mortality rate nowadays? Modern medicine. Are you saying that we should drop this entirely, just so in one million years we might be slightly more likely to mate (in a 20 year life span, with no way of caring for the infants) than we are now (assuming same conditions)?

      The greater good would be far, far worse if it weren't for this "large infrastructure". You're using the same argument anarchists use, that we shouldn't rely on a large infrastructure to live. Of course, if we get rid of the large infrastructure, we die, but at least we're independant!

    • Re:consequences (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jeko ( 179919 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:23AM (#5470829)
      First, that water went over the bridge with the invention of the bandage. We are by nature the animal that defies Nature through the use of technology.

      By definition, our medical tools are part and parcel of the evolutionary process. Would you say that the birds are "cheating" because they used wings? Or that the lungfish were cheating by getting their oxygen straight from the atmosphere?

      Second, we're not thwarting evolution. We're giving the victims their life back after accidents that Nature never intended. At what point did the Discover channel do a special on "the Drunk Driver's Place in the Ecosystem?" And what natural defense do you propose we evolve to counter this risk? Adamantium skeletons?

      Third, if you've personally ever received any sort of serious medical intervention, then you're a raging hypocrite. An injection of any kind qualifies as "serious intervention." If you haven't received any serious medical attention, then you're either very young or rather sheltered. My guess would be both.

      Last, and this is the point I really want to make, WHAT KIND OF FREAKISHLY UNFEELING JACKASS ARE YOU THAT THIS THOUGHT WOULD EVEN ENTER YOUR HEAD? Most of the candidates for this surgery are burn victims who survived a perfect glimpse of Hell, only to discover that young children run screaming from them in terror now, that even their families flinch before touching them.

      Your job here is to sit down, shut up, applaud the surgeons who are dedicating their lives to alleviating suffering, and pray that nothing ever happens to you that would make you too terrified to look in the mirror.

      Although, after a post like that, I would hope you'd avoid mirrors for a while anyway out of decent sense of shame.
      • Gotta bite. Being drunk is not a habit held only by humans, even without human intervention. Remember the drunk cedar waxwings?
        http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/1998 /closlook/c dwxwg/cdwxwg.htm
        http://www.watershedradio.org/au gust2001/080201ced ar.htm
        http://www.lonepinepublishing.com/birdsite /brdpgs/ 619.htm

        I thought it was interesting, but not really related to your (very good) argument. Carry on please.
      • Good post. It's interesting to point out that the argument is biologically suspect, too: I think you'd find that verbal display behaviors are far more important guides for humans for choosing mates.
    • "Weakening the race"? While we will never be able to conclusively prove the assertions of anthropologists and evolutionists, some would say that the very thing that allowed us to speciate is precisely our dependence on a large infrastructure. Even when we were proto-monkeys swinging in trees, we were already significantly dependent on a social structure and hierarchy. Homo sapiens has never done very well on their own. There are too many species (even now, despite our attempts to eradicate them) that are physically stronger and faster and naturally better adapted to their environment than we are, and without the "large infrastructure," we would've been extinct long ago.

      And as to the role of beauty in evolution, what it really illustrates is the evolutionary arms race between the cheaters and cheater-detectors (to steal the paradigm from Richard Dawkins, and from game theory in general.) There is a certain threshold where it would be more energetically economic to simply pretend your genes are good. So early in evolution, maybe there really was a 1:1 correspondence between a pretty face and good genes. Thereby, a mechanism would evolve for potential mates to use a pretty face as criteria. But when that energy threshold is reached where it costs less to just code for a pretty face than to actually ensure that one's genes are good (thereby destroying the connection between a pretty face and good genes) a new mechanism would likely evolve for potential mates to detect this mismatch. The cheaters would continue to find ways not only to pretend they have good genes but also to pretend that they are not faking it, and the cheater-detectors would continue to find ways to tell otherwise. The face might actually really evolved this way (in the same way that peacocks evolved ridiculously flamboyant plumage and humans evolved a purely hydrostatic, non-bony penis) and I think this is all discussed in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins [amazon.com] but I could be wrong.

  • WTF? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pettifogger ( 651170 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:46AM (#5470699)
    I always thought Michael Jackson pioneered this technique years ago.
  • Apparently everyone who has ever posted a story on this topic, hasn't seen John Woo's: Faceoff..
    In the movie, they not only switched skin, they also put "bone structure mimicking" masks on to the characters, so that they would look like each other. That's the miracle, not the switching of the skin. Skin, is skin, is skin.
    If you get a skin transplant from your ass, to replace burn or scar tissue, it doesn't look like an ass...

  • So how long... (Score:2, Funny)

    by shepd ( 155729 )
    Until the New U [imdb.com] becomes possible?

    Do have to commit carousel for reminding everyone of that movie?

  • Volunteer (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @05:52AM (#5470709)
    We need a GNU/Linux volunteer for a dangerous mission behind Redmond lines. Should you decide to accept this mission you will

    Quietly assinate Bill Gates

    Pop over to the nearest face transplanting clinic

    Shock the world when Bill Gates announces MS are giving up software development and releasing the source to the public


    • > Shock the world when Bill Gates announces MS are giving up software development and releasing the source to the public

      Bah, shock the world when Bill Gates sees how much he can spend on a weekend in Vegas!

  • Its a condition called "torsonic polarity symdrome." It's a birth defect that I think we all know atleast one person who has it.

    You can read more about TPS here [speaktomecatalog.com].

  • Reflections in the mirror (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lateralus ( 582425 ) <yoni-r@aCHICAGOctcom.com minus city> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @06:08AM (#5470739) Journal

    I wonder how the human brain and psyche deals with seeing a different face in the mirror after years of strengthening a connection between the natural face and the "I".

    • Re:Reflections in the mirror (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FTL ( 112112 ) <slashdot@neil.fras[ ]name ['er.' in gap]> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:07AM (#5470810) Homepage
      > I wonder how the human brain and psyche deals with seeing a different face in the mirror after years of strengthening a connection between the natural face and the "I".

      Been there. Twice.

      All I did was cut and comb my hair a different way, a style which my friend happened to have. When I looked in the mirror my brain did an automatic pattern match and confidently returned my friend's name instead of my name. A very disturbing experience.

      Recently I've grown a beard. It's been three months, and I still don't recognize myself in the mirror. At least the match comes up as 'unknown' as opposed to someone I know.

      So to answer your question: if your new face belonged to someone you knew, it will be far weirder than if it is a random face that you hadn't seen before. In the end, of course, the human brain will adapt.

      • Re:Reflections in the mirror (Score:5, Funny)

        by nounderscores ( 246517 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:19AM (#5470824)
        I wish I could get my facial recognition software to display names on to my head up display. Then I'd actually know how to spell them.

        You T-800 infiltrators have all the cool tech. I bet you have that real human skin'n'hair upgrade too, while I have to walk around in rubber.

        Bloody Skynet's favourites.
    • I wonder how the human brain and psyche deals with seeing a different face in the mirror after years of strengthening a connection between the natural face and the "I".

      It probably will deal with it better than it dealt with seeing the horribly-disfigured-by-facial-cancer face that the transplant is replacing.

  • at least, most geeks have nothing to worry about (Score:4, Funny)

    by collapser ( 610412 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @06:18AM (#5470750) Homepage
    organ thieves wouldn't even bother

  • I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:5, Informative)

    by kmellis ( 442405 ) <kmellis@io.com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @06:22AM (#5470753) Homepage
    I was utterly astonished at the then-current results of the accompanying little web survey: Do face transplants change a person's identity? Yes and No have each received 46% of the vote.

    Why in the world does anyone think that identity depends upon someone's face? Are people really that simple-minded?

    Also, from the article:

    "Butler told me of a psychological survey that he conducted of 120 people at his own hospital, one-third of them doctors, one-third nurses and one-third laypeople. The majority answered that they would accept someone else's face if they required one. No one, however, not even his closest colleagues, said they would donate their own."
    I'm no more reluctant to donate my face for organ harvesting as I am my liver or kidneys. That is to say, I'm not reluctant at all.

    To the people who've asked about how much the recipient would look like the donor:

    "''Certainly, identity is a central issue -- 'will I look like the donor?''' he explained in a rapid-fire, silken Irish brogue. ''But what we're proposing is taking the skin envelope with or without some muscle. So if I were to transplant my face onto you, it would look much more like you than me, because the skin envelope is elastic. It would redrape around your bone and cartilage structure. The things you would have of mine are skin tone, texture, eyebrow color, beard, things of that nature. That's why what I'm doing now is establishing a database for what is essentially a matching process. You and I, for example, are reasonably well matched, but obviously. . . .'' He gestured to a dark-skinned gentleman who had just stepped up to a nearby side counter to stir cream into his coffee. ''I wouldn't transplant your face onto his.''"
    However, later in the article it's mentioned that more complicated procedured could harvest some of the cartilage and bone as well as the skin and muscle. I imagine that eventually they could probably come very close to recreating someone's face on someone else, so the idea isn't completely far-fetched. Still, though, our ability to recognize a face is still somewhat of a mystery, although it's understood that our brains put together a great many different subtle clues. My point is that even though we see faces as near monolithic and emminently identifiable structures, the truth is that even a small differences in muscle or bone structure might make a large difference in the overall recognizability of the face. So, I suspect that a surgeon would probably have to be intending to duplicate someone's face via a transplant in order to achieve such an effect.
    • Bearing in mind that a tissue match can sometimes go across ethnicities would people consider mixing and matching skin envelopes of different shades for cosmetic purposes?
      On the other hand, the scarring would probably land the recipient ostracised from the conservitave community.
    • Why in the world does anyone think that identity depends upon someone's face? Are people really that simple-minded?

      Well, it's a question that alot of people intelligent people have pondered. Notably, think of the late Japanese avant-garde author Kobo Abe and his novel Face of Another [thejapanpage.com] in which the Abe explores the role of masks in determining self and one's interactions with society through the fictional diary of a scientist who loses his face in a horrible laboratory accident and has it replaced with a synthetic mask made based on the specifications of a stranger. The same novel was made into a movie [kfccinema.com] in 1966 by the late and great director Hiroshi Teshigahara.

      Then as well of how people often feel uninhibited when they wear masks or paint their faces -- be it at a masquerade or before going to war. Having one's face replace following in accident may not be as deliberate an act, but if the new face offers anonymity and, through people's different responses to one's presence, a different view on the world, is it really so hard to believe that it might to some extent change the identity of the wearer?

      • Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kmellis ( 442405 ) <kmellis@io.com> on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:42AM (#5470848) Homepage
        That's a very interesting and valid observation and I am completely willing to admit that identity is closely associated, psychologically, with the face. It was unfair and arrogant of me to dismiss all such concerns as being entirely simple-minded.

        However, it was the phrasing of the question that was so provocative to me. It was very absolute: whether someone's identity is changed if their face changes. It's not a very nuanced question, and mine was not a nuanced response.

        I think I'm more astonished by this than most people would be. I certainly don't equate my own face with my identity. Not coincidentally, probably, I also am very uninterested in hiding or changing my identity in any way. My identity is my self as I see my self--all the various public versions of my self that exist in other people's minds are secondary and not of great importance to me. My conception of "self" is a self that's solidly behind my facade--the outward facing part that other people associate with me is merely contingent. It occurs to me that many or most other people probably don't think this way.

        • That's a very interesting and valid observation and I am completely willing to admit that identity is closely associated, psychologically, with the face.

          The human brain has quite an interesting ability to process and remember faces. Several psychological studies have shown that a person will have a different physiological reaction to someone they have seen before, in comparison to a completely new face, which stimulates are more anxious reaction. One hypothesis for this is that it is an anachronism from a more dangerous time: "I've seen this guy before, and he didn't kill me then...so he must be ok."

          Indeed, I remember one particularly interesting password system that showed the user a series of faces, and you chose the sequence in which they came. There were millions of possible sequences, but humans have the amazing ability to learn that sequence very very easily.

          This is all of interest to me since my passion is driver's license law, and how photo ID cards play into all of that. One of the big failures of the photo ID card is that humans seem to glean more information from it psychologically than what actually is being represented by the card. These days I say that if I were to commit some sorta heinous crime, I would do it with a laminated photo ID badge around my neck...because it puts people at ease, like, somehow in having a cheap plastic card around my neck, not only do I have legitimacy, but I also am "revealing" myself to you.

          Frankly, the way humans process photo based ID cards is a science within itself. But I've become convinced that people are bedazzled by the photograph. Of course, prior to photo licenses, states printed the description information, though more for the purpose of making the sure the document belonged to the person, as opposed to truly identifying the person (some states still do issue non-photo licenses like this. Almost all states still have the description information on the document, but this is an anachronism if there is a photo, sorta.) The description information is a pretty good way of making sure the document belongs to the person, with the added benefit that people are psychologically leery of accepting it in non-driving instances for identification.

    • "Why in the world does anyone think that identity depends upon someone's face? Are people really that simple-minded?"

      You have to remember that these are people who think cloning is some sort of personality photocopier.
    • Are people really that simple-minded?

      Yes
    • Are people really that simple-minded?

      No
    • OOOOH! Identity.

      Let's talk about George Herbert Cooley and "the looking-glass self" for a moment. (This stuff always makes me happy.) Look him up on Google. He's a pretty big name in social psychology/communications.

      We see ourselves as we see others seeing us. For example, let's say I'm...on a stuffed-plush-toy-animal fencing team. You see me walking down the street in my "2003 Stuffed Animal Plush Toy Fencing Team" T-shirt and I look at you. I like to think you see it. "He sees me as a stuffed-plush-toy-animal fencer," I think. And that reinforces who I think I am, as a stuffed-plush-animal-toy-fencer.

      Stupid example, I know, but it's more or less true. We can't really bandy about the term "identity" because we are thoroughly socially constructed beings. Everything around us shapes who and what we are. Even a haircut, for me, does something to my identity, my "who I am." I cut it short and put it in pigtails with a purple streak (i'm a female,) and I feel like a punk. I keep it midlength and run around with a Nike sweatband, and I feel like an athlete. (Again, really stupid examples, but bear with me.)

      I am a punk. I am an athlete. I am a geek. I am a woman. I am an academica nut. I am a musician. I am a comic strip artist. I am a girlfriend. I am a daughter. I am a technician. I am a student. I am a slob. Every one of these "attributes" about me has been reinforced not only by me, but by someone else.

      Are we really that simple-minded? Yes. Yes, we are. Every single thing about us contributes to our whole social self.

      Just a ramble.

    • Thanks for the info. I also wouldn't mind donating my face, as long as I wasn't using it.

  • What about penis transplants? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Compact Dick ( 518888 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @06:22AM (#5470755) Homepage

    I'm serious. Is John Holmes' still available?
  • We ran this story yesterday over on Sci-Fi Today [scifitoday.com] with lots of extra info links. You can get SciFi Today headlines added to your Slashdot homepage here [slashdot.org].

  • The face is also what's behind it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:10AM (#5470816)
    The underlying skeleton and musculature of a face is just as important as the skin. Someone with a square jaw will still have it, even if the translpanted face didn't... Someone who is perpetually angry will still look angry even if the donor was not...

    From the article: 'But what we're proposing is taking the skin envelope with or without some muscle. So if I were to transplant my face onto you, it would look much more like you than me, because the skin envelope is elastic. It would redrape around your bone and cartilage structure.

    The only way to truly get someone else's face on your body would be to transplant the entire head.
  • I'm sure that Michael Jackson has already bought his plane ticket to London for this one! Now, I wonder what (who'll?) he'll look like NEXT week?

  • sort of a dupe... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:25AM (#5470834) Homepage

    ...Slashdot discussed this already here [slashdot.org], and that was a dupe of an even earlier discussion [slashdot.org]. Of course, these are from three or four months ago, and they were based on a different article. So it's not really a dupe, just sorta.

  • Fun times (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kanasta ( 70274 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:32AM (#5470841)
    Mr Doctor might get a visit by the US gov't on account of the millions they just spent on facial recognition software in airports...

  • It'll never fly (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis ( 629047 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:34AM (#5470843)
    First of all, to even get a donor face, you'd have to take it from a dead donor (Doh, but it's not like with kidneys.. where you can give one and still live a normal.. or at least semi-normal life) And think of how reluctant the loved ones of said donor might be to transplant a face.. even though it wouldn't really be transforming him into the other guy... you can still see how a family might react..

  • Old News... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mike1024 ( 184871 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @07:35AM (#5470845)
    Hey,

    A New York Times Magazine article about how a London surgeon is planning on performing an experimental full-face transplant.

    You know, that this is possible was announced months ago [bbc.co.uk].

    I read it here [plastic.com] first.

    Michael
  • For me a face transplant isn' enough. I want a total body transplant! I would like a body that is 10 years younger than the one I have now, and fully functional! It would also be interesting to try what it is like to be a woman for a change.
  • Is this just a little bit creepy to anyone else? I mean, come on. A whole new face? That's just fucked up.

    I suppose it would have it's uses though. Michael Jackson can finally stop having his nose done, ugly girls around the world will finally have hope of getting a date to the prom, President Bush can get himself a face that doesn't look like that of a simpleton, and good ol' Osama can use this as the ultimate way to hide from us.

    Wait. Check that last statement. Honestly, how hard is it to find a 6' Arab attatched to a kidney dialysis (?sp) machine?

    I can see it now. "Yes doctor, I was thinking of the Clarke Gable look, but then I broke down and decided that I'd like to have the face of Harvey Korman. Can I get his voice, too? I've always wanted to pull off a good Great Gazoo inpression at parties..."
  • I call dibs on Joe Millionaire's face....that way I can definitely get some women!!

  • Temporary face transplantation 7,000 years old (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ilan Volow ( 539597 ) on Sunday March 09, 2003 @02:29PM (#5471991) Homepage
    It's called beer. Drink enough of it, the ugliest face will be transplanted with that of a supermodel.

    Warning: may induce vomiting and only lasts 3 hours.

  • The Biggest Problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kenneth ( 43287 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @04:28AM (#5475293) Homepage
    I would think that a huge problem regarding face transplants would be getting the family to go along with it.

    There is a lot of importance attached to having an open casket funeral, and for a lot of people there is a significant need to see and identify the body in order to accept that that particular person is gone. An anonymous body, or an urn full of ashes just doesn't cut it for most people. Particularly when there has been a serious accident.

    Removal of the face will make such things impossible. Mourners will not be able to come and see the face of the decased, this makes it more difficult to accept.

    I had a friend of mine die in an airplane crash. I refused to believe that he was dead until I saw the body. Even then, I had trouble accepting it because although they rebuilt most of his face, it was pretty badly messed up, and they had to put sheer veils over the casket so you couldn't look too close.

    A mortitian once told me a story about someone who had died when their head was crushed. Normally this would make an open casket funeral impossible, however since this person was into motorcycles, they placed his helment where his head should go, put some black paper behind the visor, and had the casket open.

    If people are willing to go to these lengths, a facial transplant isn't going to go over too well with the next of kin all that often.

    With other organs, there is little or no distinguishable difference. Even the eyes can be donated, and the difference fixed up so that you generally can't tell. The entire face however is going to cause problems for a lot of people, and psyhological need to see the deceased one last time.

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