Transplanting organs have become a common method of treatment in the United States, a last-resort method that has yielded many beneficial results. But how about transplanting an entirely new face? Back in December, the Cleveland Clinic announced that it has successfully “replaced 80 percent of a disfigured woman’s face with that of a decreased female donor”. The head surgeon was Maria Siemionow. The living patient is reported doing well, but the surgery has sparked enormous controversy within the medical field.
Facial reconstruction is a fairly common treatment for burn victims. Skin from various other parts of the patient’s body is grafted onto the burn surface. However, this creates a discolored pattern on the face in many cases. The way to get around this, argues Dr. Siemionow, is to transplant an entire new face onto the area. The controversy behind this conclusion is that the new treatment is not absolutely necessary for survival; it is merely a cosmetic improvement. Also, it would completely change the appearance of a person. A trait that was unique by birth can now be changed at will.
This opens up a host of problems. No matter how sophisticated face detecting software becomes, it is unable to detect a face that has been transplanted entirely. This opens up a host of problems regarding law-enforcement and privacy issues. How can cops be expected to catch a hardened criminal if the criminal looks nothing like the picture in their hands, and how can identity theft be stopped if the faces look exactly alike? The simple answer is that it would be impossible. Furthermore, psychology can confirm that facial features are a huge part of personal identity. There would be huge psychological consequences to a person if the image looking back at him in the mirror were unrecognizable.
The bottom line is that the issue of full-face transplants must be handled carefully. It must not become a mainstream phenomenon before its full effect on the psyche is known. Patients treated with such a procedure are often times doomed to a life of constant immunosuppressants. The pills must be taken or else they face rejection of their entire faces by their immune systems. Is this really a necessary and credible treatment? The old method of skin transplant may be outdated and leave splotches on the face, but at least it retains the original appearance without fear of an immune response. It seems that full-face transplants is a step backwards in terms of treatment and benefits. Unless a patient’s face is injured beyond irreparable repair, it should not be used.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/16/AR2008121600838.html
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/facetransplant.html
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2 comments:
Albert,
This issue of full face transplantation is extremely interesting, yet certainly very controversial. I agree that this procedure may clash with law enforcement if criminals decide to completely make over their faces; however, I am generally in support of the procedure.
Full face transplantation is very beneficial for those who are in desperate need of it. Even though you state that this procedure is merely cosmetic, I feel that this procedure can change lives. The life of a burn victim is permanently scarred, both emotionally and physically by the burn incident. So, this procedure can potentially eliminate the physical scarring, which is half the problem. Currently, this new procedure is the only hope for a normal face free of embarrassing, dead and splotchy skin. To imagine this scenario, I attempt to put myself in the shoes of someone who has been burnt on the majority of their face and wishes only to return to normal life and put the incident in the past. If this were my situation, I would certainly seek this full face transplantation as opposed to skin grafting from other areas of my body.
Though this is technically a sort of cosmetic procedure by definition, I don’t believe that it is fair to compare this procedure to a common cosmetic procedure such as, say, a nose job. The implications of full face transplantation are to repair something that has been destroyed, whereas, for a cosmetic nose job, the patient simply wants to improve their looks (even though in the opinion on the patient, a nose job may seem like a necessity).
In terms of law enforcement, only in the case where this type of procedure became a phenomenon for everyday citizens, would this create a large-scale issue of facial recognition. To eliminate this problem, there could be regulations set on who can obtain a full face transplantation. For instance, patients must be admitted from a burn unit and proved to have suffered a certain high degree of burns to the face before they can be considered for full facial transplantation. As long as there are specific conditions employed for receiving a full face transplantation, this procedure would be vital in restoring the normal lives of those whose faces are severely affected by a burn incident.
Rachel
Albert,
To date four face transplants have been performed, two of the patients, a woman in France and a man in China, had been mauled by a dog and bear respectively, and the other two patients, a man in the UK and a woman in the US, were horribly disfigured. Can you really say that these people underwent unnecessary surgery? Maybe they were not at risk of dying but they had no chance of living. As a society we are not accepting, if any one of these four individuals were to walk down the street our society would stare at them, insult them, tease them and runaway from them. Face transplants are only done on those in dire need, and it is a lot more then a mere cosmetic surgery, it is truly life saving. Yes, there would be psychological problems to these people looking into a mirror and not seeing their face, but they would not compare to looking into a mirror and not having a face.
The issue of criminals getting face transplants is really a non-issue at this time. It is far too risky a surgery, only a handful of surgeons are capable of doing it, and right now there is so much publicity involved with the surgery. Furthermore, no criminal would risk being on an immunosuppressant for the rest of their life, or even worse, risk having their new face rejected.
I think the issue that the medical world needs to address is not is the surgery necessary for life, but is it necessary for lifestyle. Why are hand transplants and face transplants such a controversial issue compared with kidney transplants? Surely patients can just live off a dialysis machine, and therefore transplanting a kidney is not necessary. Just as you would not force someone with kidney failure to live the rest of their life in a hospital on a dialysis machine, we should not force someone with facial disfigurement to live the life of a recluse because society has shunned them away. In the words of Maria Siemionow, the surgeon who performed the most recent face transplant, “it's very difficult to go around life having no face."
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