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Full Facial Transplant Is One Step Closer
Hugh Pickens writes "A Chinese medical team led by Shuzhong Guo of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an has successfully completed the first transplant to include facial bone in a transplant on a man whose face was slashed by a bear. The Chinese graft included muscles, nerves, blood vessels, cartilage and skin and included an intact salivary gland, another first. Two years after the procedure, the man can eat, drink and speak, thanks to the gradual fusing of transplanted nerves and muscles with what remained of the patient's own. This transplant together with the another ground breaking transplant last year by French doctors that removed a huge tumor that had completely infiltrated and disfigured their patient's face, now sets the stage for a full facial transplant."
I was reading about this story this morning. The BBC has more pictures here.
What I found funny is that the caption for the first photo warns, "SOME MAY FIND THE FOLLOWING IMAGES DISTURBING." Personally, I found the first photo - the photo to which that warning is attached - the most disturbing. Yes, more disturbing than the tumor-face.
There's also a photo in there which reminded me of Two-face from The Dark Knight, but it's too blurry to be scary.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
The face is just a wrapper - a receipient wouldn't have the same bone structure, behavior/expressions (raised eyebrows, winks, scowls), eyes, ways of moving mouth and lips (speech, etc) as the donor.
Remember also that the police do facial reconstruction from bare skulls and get recognisable results - the bone structure is a VERY large part of what makes you look like you do.
Slashdot would greatly benefit from disabling anonymous commenting.
I agree.
Sense of humor died long ago on /.