Twelve queue to be chosen for the first face transplant

September 19, 2005

Twelve queue to be chosen for the first face transplant
By James Bone
Applicants for pioneering surgery know there is only 50 per cent chance of success and that they cannot choose what they look like



FIVE men and seven women — all severely disfigured — have been shortlisted in the “face race” to receive the world’s first face transplant.
In the next few weeks the 12 applicants will visit the renowned Cleveland Clinic in the United States, which will select the first recipient of a new face from a cadaver. The clinic received approval for the pioneering operation from its ethics board last year, though regulators in Britain and France had rejected the surgery.



But Maria Siemionow, who is leading the project, admits that the chance of the donor’s body rejecting the new face could be as high as 50 per cent. The clinic’s “consent form” says that the surgery is so novel that doctors do not think informed consent is even possible. The transplant does not guarantee they will ever look “normal”, and their appearance could even get worse, according to the form.

At the interviews Dr Siemionow, 55, will ask would-be transplant recipients to smile, raise their eyebrows, close their eyes and open their mouths. Then she will ask: “Are you afraid that you will look like another person?” As part of her preparations, Dr Siemionow rented a video of the 1997 film Face Off, starring John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, in which two characters swap faces. But Dr Siemionow says that unlike the film, the transplant recipient will not resemble the face donor because the underlying bone structure remains the same.

The unprecedented surgery touches on the deepest human feelings about identity. Some ethicists contend that facial disfigurement is not life- threatening and therefore not worth a lifetime on immuno suppressant drugs, which can be justified for other organ transplants. Dr Siemionow and other doctors argue that many disfigured patients are tormented by shame and depression. “For many patients, being able to go back to their normal lives is worth the risk of taking lifelong immuno suppression,” she says. “Many of those patients do not leave their houses.”


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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1787275,00.html

they interviewed a man in the town i've evacuated to & his face as it is already makes small children scream

he has no social life, he'll never have love or a job again where he must have human contact

what do you have to lose

better a small chance than no chance

i wish the best to whoever is chosen