Of course, Europe did it first, because we’ve been debating the moral and ethical implications to death.
First, I’d like to invite the doctors in the house to discuss their feelings about the morality of this operation. In my view, the only moral issue would be having the ability to perform such an operation and to NOT do it.
Also, I’d like the rest of you to give your opinions on whether it would creep you out to wear someone else’s skin on your face, as well as your opinion on the morality issue. Thanks!
I don’t understand why having a nose, lips, and chin transplant should be any less “moral” than having a kidney or a heart transplant.
One’s “original equipment” face is not magically an indivisible part of one, any more than one’s 'original equipment" kidney or heart is. Consider how many people out there have had their noses, lips, and chins surgically remodeled. You can look however you want to look without having it be “immoral”, sometimes even drastically different from the way you originally appeared (viz. Michael Jackson), so just because the nose, lips, and chin in question come from another human’s face instead of from a cosmetic surgeon’s gifted remodeling of what you’ve already got doesn’t make obtaining them any less “moral”.
And I think it’s pretty clear that the nose, lips, and chin will look different on the recipient’s face due differences in underlying bone structure, so it’s not like they’ve created some kind of “Ohmigod, it’s HER!” “clone” of the brain-dead donor.
That’s my feeling as well. I have no idea where they’re coming from as far as morality goes.
However, there is the question of higher risk of developing cancer, or even rejecting the face, which presumably would leave the patient with no face at all. The way I see it, if I was so disfigured that I felt I had to transplant a face to feel good about myself, the risk would be secondary to the benefit.
According to this article and the one I saw on the Surgery Channel, the operation actually creates what amounts to a “3rd” face. It is somewhere between the donor and the recipient.
They briefly mentionned it during the evening news, and apparently, besides skin (seemingly a kind of “triangle” going from the top of the nose to the lower jaw) they also grafted arteries and the facial nerves from the ears.
They didn’t show any picture of the patient before the surgery, so I wouldn’t have any idea of how severe was the disfigurement.
Only immoral if the face was stolen and the modification done for criminal purposes. Otherwise? Unless you have serious damage, absurdly frivolus and a [not really but you know what i mean] criminal waste of resources. If you are facially damaged [accident, illness or birth defect] then I think it is great, if it means you are more easily mainstreamed in society.
I am a bit biased, an army buddy of my fathers that I grew up seeing had serious damage to his face from a bouncing betty mine so I can be a bit more circumspect in the presence of facial abnormality, we had it impressed on us that it was not polite to notice the deformations, and to act as if he had a normal face. Good training for us to be polite =) I know that he would have benefitted from a facial transplant. He certainly would have been better able to get a decent job instead of a night janitor that never came in contact with people.
