Slashdot Mirror
First Face Transplant
mriya3 writes to tell us the BBC is reporting that surgeons in France have performed the first ever face transplant. The medical team, led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, transplanted live tissue to a 36-year old woman whose face had been destroyed by a dog. From the article: "It has been technically possible to carry out such a transplant for some years, with teams in the US, the UK and France researching the procedure. [...] But the ethical concerns of a face transplant, and the psychological impact to the patient of looking different has held teams back."
Was it John Travolta's or Nicholas Cage's?
I wouldn't want either.
A live person is missing a face. A dead person doesn't need theirs any more. Where's the problem?
And how could the "psychological impact" be worse than not havin a face? The patient is going to "look different" no matter what is done.
The team of surgeons deny that The Silence of the Lambs played any influence in their technique.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
And the "psychological impact" to the patient of looking different?? Looking different from a hideously scarred accident victim? Isn't that why they want surgery in the first place?
This seems to me like a story desperately in search of sensationalism.
But when will they be able to tranplant a working brain into a Slashdot Troll?
Now I can be good looking and smart!
Michael Jackson is in france this week for an undisclosed medical procedure.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
I've heard the rumors of organ snatchers where you wake up in a bathtub with stitches and one kidney. Should we incredibly good looking people fear knife weilding hoardes of uglypeople hell bent on revenge?
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
they can't reconnect the nerves can they? Wouldn't it feel like having a thick layer of dead skin on your face all the time, I mean I'd want to pull it off continually.
Bin laden got away from afghanistan with no problems. Now he's mascarading as Dick Cheney.
The doctors said they replaced the lips, nose, and chin. Sounds like half the people in Hollywood if you ask me.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/"The ethical concerns of a face transplant...."
Someone's already supposedly cloned a human embryo. I wouldn't worry about facial transplants too much.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Even if you got a face transplant, you wouldn't look like the face of the donor. Your bone structure etc is what makes up most of your appearance. Although, you wouldn't like you use to. So I don't see how ethics would really take a roll in this matter.
While everyone makes a big deal about Face/Off, because they took the idea of a face transplant literally, the idea of surgery making you look like someone else has been around for quite a while.
For example, in Arsenic and Old Lace, one of the plot points involved a criminal whose looks have been altered to resemble Boris Karloff. In the stage play, this part was actually performed by Karloff.
Here we go. Time for all of the inane "Face/Off" replies as though no one else would have possibly thought of it. I guess that we should all just laugh hysterically and use the idiotic TripMaster Monkey anime smiles to make the Face/Off posters feel complete.
[holding sides laughing] Oh, GOD! "Face/Off"! I would never have thought of that! Oh, that is SO-O-O-O funny! I'm laughing too hard! Oh, look! Another reference! Please! Stop![/holding sides laughing]
There. I hope the "Face/Off" people feel better now.
Go ahead. Mod me down. The really sad part what I've said is 100% true. Then again, Slashdot replies often don't care about truth.
What is so difficult about a face but we can grow other parts.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1107/features/body.htm
This could be urban legend, but a few years back some Mexican drug lord tried to get a face transplant and didn't survive long.
Anyone else remember this?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I don't think (at least from my cultural background) that there is a concern with transplanting a face--it is just like any other donated organ. However, in many cultures the face has great significance that is deeply meshed into the sociological values and even linguistics of their lives. Many Native American languages, for example use the concept of the face to identify everything. For example the phrase --ru li che'--in the native American language of K'ekchi' literally translates as 'face of the tree', but what it is really talking about is 'fruit'. If you are familiar with someone, you would say --ninau ru-- meaning "I know his face". In such cultures the removal of a face removes identity. In this case you destroy the identity of one, and replace the other--which would have deep psychology implications to these types of cultures.
So I think the problem here is not whether it is right or wrong, legal or illegal, but what is morally reprehensible to society. And since this is an issue that really hasn't been traversed before, I think it only predictable that there be hesitation to undergo such a procedure.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Given that skin cells are constantly being shedded and regenerating, wouldn't this (slowly) transform back into the recipiant's original face?
Or would a skin sample from the transplant area show different DNA for all time?
I'm genuinely curious. Is there a doctor in the house?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Now THAT would be suspicious!
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
I grew up with one-quarter of my face missing in action. When I was two, doctors removed the upper left quadrant of my face including the eyelids and the skin down to the bottom of my nose. Twenty operations and fifteen years later I finally got working (but not very pretty) eyelids again. The person undergoing the face transplant has already suffered the psychological impact of loosing their original face and the impact of being treated like some kind of monster. The trauma of getting a different face can't possibly be any worse.
How bad would it suck to reject your own face?
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
You say this as if you think it is
a) easy to kidnap someone worth swapping faces with, including someone who has other similar physical characteristics (some are easier, e.g. body style, hair color; some are difficult, e.g. extreme height or weight differences, skin color)
b) an easy and painless procedure that doesn't require months of healing
c) easy to find a doctor who has the necessary skills who doesn't already have more money than you could possibly offer to perform the procedure for an illicit reason
d) easy to reprogram your personality and habits to blend in in the places where the person whose face you "swapped" with yours would be known or well-known (what's the point of stealing someone's physical identity if not to gain access to the places that person would normally have access to, but which you do not?)
What about maintenance? Supposing a poor person could afford a procedure, how on earth would they pay for prescriptions? Prices have skyrocketed in the past few decades, meanwhile, Merck spends over 60% of their budget on Marketing, mostly in telling the middle and upper classes what designer drugs they should ask their doctor about, as well as random kickbacks for doctors to prescribe their brand exclusively.
What about malpractice insurance? This is probably the #1 cause of inflated health care prices, our overly-litigious society is effectively killing services, private and governmental, while trial lawyers are cleaning up.
It's not all the government's fault, Captain Industry.
--- What
The population of Gander Newfoundland is about 10k people, on 9/11 there was about 10k people stranded there for a few days. Was that where your friend got stuck? Things were, naturally, a little messed up with trying to feed and shelter that many people. Sorry about that but do you really think some remote outpost in Alaska caould handle taking care of that many people much better? Next time feel free to have all those planes circle over the ocean until they run out of fuel. http://www.snopes.com/rumors/gander.htm
Actually nip/tuck stole the idea straight from a Discovery channel documentary about face transplants that aired several months ago that I happened to Tivo. They stole all the elements of the girl who lost her face, including how the girl got her face ripped off.
In the documentary, this girl from India got too close to a machine and her hair got tangled up and literally ripped off her face. The showed the face and it looked gory... you could see the eye sockets, etc. The uncle or something put the girl's face in plastic bag and motorscootered for like 3 hrs to get to the closest hospital where they managed to reattach it. They showed her like years later, and considering the fact that she had her face ripped off, it wasn't so bad. She didn't look regular, but at least that poor girl didn't look horrendous.
The also showed some people in the documentary that looked like monsters. Literally like monsters, I can't describe it more. Like something you would see out of Doom 3, it was horrifying, and if you see these people, you will understand why face transplants are necessary. You can't live the way this person lives, with the completed destroyed face, because no one, and I mean no one, can stand to look at them. We're not talking about ugly people, we're talking about they look like walking, talking monsters. I'm a grown man, but when I saw this lady, I wanted to cry because that is no way to live a life. I would rather be on immunosuppresants for 15 years and die of kidney failure and be able to walk around in public rather than live the way this poor woman has been living.
I had to stop watching the show halfway because it was too much to bear, just too shocking, and I used to frequent alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless during the golden era where they had pictures of murder victims, people sawing dead bodies in half, etc. It was too horrifying for me, and I thank God to have never undergone something like that and hope that I never will have to, and to those people that require a face transplant, I wish them the best of luck in getting this face transplant thing working.
Did you know that in the US in 2006, more children will grow up in homes that have declared bankruptcy than will grow up with divorced parents?
Did you also know that as of 2004, over 50% of all bankruptcies in the US are directly related to a major medical illness somewhere in the family?
50% Medical Bankruptcy article (2005)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 1999 (~ 500,000 families)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 2001 (~ 1.5 million families)
--- What
I'm with you 100% on personal responsibility, but I think you'll have to agree that other major Western democracies with healthcare systems do not produce these results. Canadians are much slimmer than Americans, as are the people in all of the EU states. The United States is one of the only (or maybe THE only) Western democracy without funded healthcare programs for its citizens. 65% of Americans are overweight or obese now. There's not really a causal relationship there, though.
Fat and wasteful are becoming almost objectives in and of themselves for the "average" American. I don't think a functioning health care system in the US would lead to fatter people. I do think that people would continue getting heavier and lazier, but not having to pay out of pocket isn't the cause. Being American is the cause, with the mentality that has come to be dominant in our country.
Having had a big swath of my forehead flesh disconnected from its nerves in a car accident, I can tell you that you get used to it. And, no, you don't want to pull it off. When it first happens, it's an injury and you do all you can to avoid touching it altogether. After it heals, you're used to not messing with it. By that point, you're accustomed to the way it feels anyway.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Science takes its cues from Nip/Tuck. How frightening!
no, from Tony Hawk, after all, they just did a faceplant...
Karma, karma burning bright...
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I have an anecdote that may yellow that rosy picture of the Canadian medical system you are trying to paint.
Someone I know was living in Canada when they injured their back. The injury was declared to be "not life threatening." Because of this the wait time for the MRI was quite long. More than four months (16 weeks in your time.) During the time between the MRI and the injury this woman was in extreme pain and unable to move from a laying position.
She eventually found a way to get into a private MRI (at considerable cost). Once that was done her case proceeded quickly and with treatment she was back on her feet in less than 3 weeks.
So, in Canada "extreme pain and immobility" is not "life threatening" and therefore not worthy of a MRI in what I would call a "reasonable" time. Reasonable in the US is something like 3 hours. We are talking almost 3 orders of magnitude different. That's all, just a thousand times longer, no biggie.
Hey, I'm not saying that America is perfect, just that your picture of Canada has been discredited by Canadians that I know. It's kind of hard to take what you say as veritas when I have seen differnt first hand.
And as for the bankrupcy, maybe you haven't been close to someone who has experienced bankrupcy from medical expenses, but it can be liberating for them. Having those medical bills off of your credit profile and out of your economic portfolio of obligations allows many people who survive severe illness to purchase new cars and homes within less than a year of the bankrupcy. Individual bankrupcy in the US is very different from what you probably think it is.
"...pray they don't live in the US when they get ill"
I live in Houston. I meet people all the time from all over the world. Many of them are here in Houston to visit (or stay at) the Houston Medical Center. The reason? They want to live and we just happen to have one of the world's best cancer treatment centers here, Md. Anderson. As for me, (and many others from all ove the world apparently) I would rather go where I can get the best medical service available, regardless of price, when I have a serious illness. If I live through it I will happily file bankrupcy. You can't spend all that money you saved on medical expenses from the grave, you know.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
You remind me of a fellow who was convinced that he was superior to everyone else due to hard work, dedication, and skill. His eyes were so tightly shut that, one day, when he reached around to pat himself on the back for his own superiority he ended up grabbing his pecker and masturbating until he shot himself in the eye. Can you believe it? He was so completely oblivious to the way things work that, when he thought he was congratulating himself, he was really just masturbating. I guess it worked for him, though, because he felt better for it and continued to walk around feeling superior to everyone else. He never noticed the big wad dripping from his face, though, because he was, as I've said, so completely oblivious to the entire world.
Come back when you have something real to say.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I am not Canadian, and this is not to defend their healthcare system, but come on.
MRI machines are not "THAT" plentyful, it takes over an hour to do a scan, and generaly they are well booked for this expensive scan.
In a critical or life threatening situation, sure an ER or physician may find a way to get you scanned more quickly. My girlfreind freaked out and moved (ashthma cough) during the last few minutes of the hour long scan.. This equals worthles scan.. next opening for rescan was 2 weeks.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net