Surgeon Says Face Transplants a Reality 248
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."
FP w/useful info (Score:4, Informative)
GREAT! (Score:3, Funny)
This face has a few holes in
This is great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, FP?
What a shame. (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
about Jacqueline [austin360.com].
Living with the consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the worst that could happen to him is what's happening now - that he is alive and facing the fact that he was responsible for destroying her life [mind you, she seems to me a very spirited woman. Makes me proud of humanity.]
Do you really think he'd commit the same mistake, assuming he's well-adjusted and has a functional conscience? I didn't think so either. Every moment of the rest of his life will be weighed down by chains of misery.
Also check out her official website [helpjacqui.com].
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:3, Insightful)
What sickens me is if he had been black or hispanic, he'd have been charged with two counts of murder and would be on death row right now. But because he's the star (white) football player, he gets seven years and $20 grand. If I were a Texan, I'd be pushing to have that scumbag judge impeached.
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
You may well be right on that, but is imposing the penalty on a white justice when the penalty isn't really justifiable?
Remember, equality means treating everyone equally, and as a non-white this is exactly what I want. Discrimination that favours non-whites will breed resentment among whites, and I wouldn't blame them one bit for that.
Oh by the way, fuck political correctness
Cheers,
CD
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:2)
Political correctness (and thus Affirmative Action) is a bane to American rights more than any type of racism or discrimination is directly and on its own.
I'm a 21 y/o white male with blue eyes and brown hair, and I've undergone more direct racial and sexual discrimination than several black people that I know. (as long as you ignore the fact that women get 'harassed' almost daily by guys oogling them, if they're even remotely attractive)
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:2)
By all accounts, this asshole feels remorse. I expect him to get out of jail and start a crusade against drunk driving.
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:2)
Having lived near where Randy Moss played, I can assure you that ignoring justice has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with whether you're a star football player.
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:2)
A lifelong prohibition from drinking, with random blood tests, would a good start.
Not for 7 years, but for life. That's what the victims get, after all.
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:2)
Let him experience what he caused. That's old-school punishment, eye for an eye type of deal. If he didn't get the death penalty, he should get something much worse: living out the rest of his life looking just like his victim.
Re:Living with the consequences (Score:2)
Re:More info. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every human being has the right to live. and every human being made mistakes.
To kill a person just because he killed someone, or destroied someone's life, is revenge, not justice.
Re:More info. (Score:3, Interesting)
And how is locking someone in a cage for the rest of their life not revenge?
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Prevention of more/other crimes to society?
Re:More info. (Score:4, Insightful)
A little off-topic, maybe... But I've come to to the same conclusion regarding a nation's "soverign right" to wage war...
In other words, if it's right to pre-emptively strike another country on the basis of what it might do, then it's perfectly right for me to shoot someone in the parking lot for looking at me funny. Any reasonable being can agree that's not the case, so why the double-standard? Nations are just organisms that have people for cells, after all.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Re:More info. (Score:2)
But again, entirely off the subject and likely to get me downmodded.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Thanks GWBush, I've suspected a guy that I think is up to no good. And now that you're proven that pre-emptive strikes are OK, I can shoot this guy.
If anyone can find it, post it.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Your whole 'nation just an organism' is flawed, too. If that were the case, suceeding from a nation shouldn't be a problem.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Unless I planned on escaping, I'd rather be dead than to spend the rest of my life in prison. The founders of this country thought this way, too. They only used gaols for keeping people until their trial date. Their sentence was always quick, whether it be a brand or execution. People were never kept in prison as a punishment.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Every human being is precious. Nothing should be more important to us as human beings than to preserve the basic right to live. If we really need to control population, then we can always have fewer children.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Re:More info. (Score:2)
What was done to this girl denied her of her life.
Murder denies people of their life.
Death is the consequence by any reasonable social rule, not revenge or punishment. It's something that murders inflict upon themselves, and necessarily required for society to carry out.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
>things are imagined by man, and bestowed by man.
The whole basis of the American government is that there are some things that come from a source higher than government, or man.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Anyway, the other day one man at work was extolling the virtues of drunk driving, I wish I had this page and these pictures for him then. If it only killed the drinker, then it'd be fine, IMO, but it more often than not kills "innocents." It makes me feel better for driving a friend home a couple days ago . . . but even he gave me his keys (I don't drink at all.)
Death penalty questions are hard, of course, but I think what the fmr. Illinois governer did was right, commuting all the sentances from death to life w/o parole. Maybe a little too far, a stay until the DNA testing could be done and so on, I could see that move.
But until the death penalty is prompt, fairly given, and never has the potential to be inflicted on an innocent person, no-one should be executed. Don't give me any shit about those who confess, those who confess are extremely rarely given death as a punishment anyway.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
If you wouldn't mind, could you share the "virtues" he was extolling?
I find myself extremely curious.
Re:More info. (Score:2, Informative)
Gandalf the Grey
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Re:More info. (Score:3, Interesting)
Has this ever happened to you? (you = whoever is reading this)
If so, you're _exactly_ the same as Reggie, you were just lucky enough not to hit anyone.
If you're going to put this guy in the gas chamber, make sure you throw in every other asshole who has ever jumped in a car with their blood full of alcohol.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Actually by several legal doctrines, if, while committing a felony (which drunk driving is, in most states), that all by itself can constitute premeditation (eg if you burst into convenience store carrying an Uzi and wearing a ski mask and some old guy has a heart attack and dies, that fact alone can justify a murder charge and conviction).
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Re:More info. (Score:2)
I think you, and several other posters, are confused about the charge (and degrees) of "Murder".
The dictionary definition of murder [reference.com] indicates "The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice." (emphasis added). Note that premeditation is not a mutually inclusive condition.
Some definitions, according to state statutes that I could find handily, but are essentially portable to most states in America, and quite similar to Canada's laws (if I can find them, I'll follow-up with them)
Additionally, there are manslaughter charges, which tend to be lesser. I believe you'll find that the minimum charge applicable to this case is Murder in the Third Degree, with Second Degree a definite possibility depending on the prosecutor and judge/jury.
You are correct, however, that drunk driving does not equate to premeditation, in that the driver does not, by virtue of consuming alcohol in and of itself, predetermine the taking of a specific human life. I'm sure there have been first degree murders committed while intoxicated, likely some comitted with a motor vehicle, but that's a whole nother kettle of fish.
Not quite. Premeditation, by nature, requires that you commit an act with the specific intention of carrying out a particular objective. If you've already got the gun in the store and kill someone as a side-effect of the armed robbery, the murder was not premeditated. You'd have to plan to kill a patron or the clerk and carry out the robbery with that intention in mind to be considered for premeditation. Of course, the prosecutor has to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that you did, in fact, premeditate the murder, otherwise the charge would be lesser.
Of course, you can take all of this with a suitable quantity of NaCL, due to the IANAL [everything2.com] factor.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Here is the code for involuntary manslaugher.
I guess I should add that like most other people around here - IANAL.
Re:More info. (Score:2)
Okay, I would accept a guaranteed contingent of 10 ass-rapes a day for 7 years as a decent substitute. If he survives that, then I figure he's done his penance. If he doesn't come out alive, no real loss.
Yup (Score:2)
Correct Link (Score:5, Informative)
Whole new meaning ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whole new meaning ... (Score:3, Funny)
You must mean "my face, your ass."
Oh, wait...!
skin grafting (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:skin grafting (Score:2)
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.
Re:Whole new meaning ... (Score:2)
Suck it down.
Identity theft? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Identity theft? (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
it's not the face .... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:it's not the face .... (Score:2)
Homer: <Snake>Time for you to die little dude. </Snake>
consequences (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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 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.
Re:consequences (Score:2)
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/199
http://www.watershedradio.org/a
http://www.lonepinepublishing.com/birdsit
I thought it was interesting, but not really related to your (very good) argument. Carry on please.
Re:consequences (Score:2)
What makes us human (Score:2)
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)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Funny)
Some people.. (Score:2)
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)
Do have to commit carousel for reminding everyone of that movie?
Re:So how long... (Score:2)
Volunteer (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re: Volunteer (Score:2, Funny)
> 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!
Re:Volunteer (Score:2)
This will finally help people with TPS (Score:2, Funny)
You can read more about TPS here [speaktomecatalog.com].
Reflections in the mirror (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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)
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.
Re:Reflections in the mirror (Score:2)
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)
I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:5, Informative)
Why in the world does anyone think that identity depends upon someone's face? Are people really that simple-minded?
Also, from the article:
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:
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.other goals (Score:2)
On the other hand, the scarring would probably land the recipient ostracised from the conservitave community.
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2)
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.
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2)
You have to remember that these are people who think cloning is some sort of personality photocopier.
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2)
Yes
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2)
No
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2)
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.
Re:I just read that article a few minutes ago. (Score:2)
What about penis transplants? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm serious. Is John Holmes' still available?
Extra Links And Info On This Story (Score:2)
The face is also what's behind it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The face is also what's behind it (Score:2)
In other news, they're some guy is trying to do this [bbc.co.uk]. The problem is, it is less a head transplant than it is a body transplant because the transplanted head comes with a brain in it- can you say BONUS!
I'm sure that Michael Jackson will be 1st in Line! (Score:2)
sort of a dupe... (Score:3, Informative)
...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)
It'll never fly (Score:3, Insightful)
Old News... (Score:3, Informative)
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
Total body transplant (Score:2)
Re:Total body transplant (Score:2)
Thank You, Drive Thru (Score:2, Funny)
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.... (Score:2)
Re:I call dibs on.... (Score:2)
Temporary face transplantation 7,000 years old (Score:3, Funny)
Warning: may induce vomiting and only lasts 3 hours.
The Biggest Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Dilemma time. (Score:2)
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