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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."
Saw a pretty good documentary on this about 10 years ago. Ah, here it is.
The article doesn't mention this; but John Woo was a technical consultant for the Chinese surgical team.
#DeleteChrome
A Chinese medical team...has successfully completed the first facial transplant
They will do ANYTHING to ensure that their underage gymnasts can compete in the Olympics.
I'm a big tall mofo.
From the article:
The Chinese team, led by Shuzhong Guo of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an, is the first to include facial bone in a face transplant, carried out on 13 April 2006.
The correct version should read:
The Chinese team, led by Shuzhong Guo of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an, is the first to include facial bone in a face transplant, carried out on 13 April 2004.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wonder how many people would actually be willing to donate their face. It's one thing to donate blood or donate an organ when you die, but to donate part of or the entirety of what makes you most visibly recognizable? Even though the donor would be dead, the family might have issues with disfiguring the corpse.
Slashdot would greatly benefit from disabling anonymous commenting.
Slashdot would greatly benefit from disabling anonymous commenting.
I agree.
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.
So I suppose now he can grin and bear it.
In your face, bear!
Bear's response: Ooooooh, Face!
bear/
Think he picked out the new one with FaceBook?
Boy, is his face Red.
Now he'll have to face the truth like he's never faced it before.
Best thing about a face transplant? Turning up at the donors funeral and making ghost noises.
full facials for years....oh wait, whats that, "full facial transplants", nevermind.
Monstar L
I didn't because I would have felt like a hypocrite. That is probably not the right word, but when I first saw the pictures, I was all like W.T.F?!? I thought the "after" picture was the before picture until I started scrolling though a little bit (I saw this article on a different site that had more photos).
The other site also had the photos featured from this article:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5il4qlI62UWuVdQ-az7K0N7OvGEoQD92N0TFO1
Again, it was a total W.T.F. moment for me. No, not a Worse Than Failure® moment, but you know what I mean. I got a little introspective after that and decided to leave it alone. Like, what if I saw that guy on the street, would I gasp in horror? Would I stare in amazement? I felt like my submitting it would just be a point and stare opportunity. Please tell me I am not the only one that had this thought.
because they all look alike
No, it is not. There has been research and people of various races are not good at recognising people from another race. For example, westerners will look at hair colour as one of the parameter. Obviously, unless the hair is died, it is not a good parameter for distinguishing oriental people. As it turns out, various races use different sets of parameters to recognise individual people. If you're not trained in that, you'll easily conclude that they look alike. Witness testimonies where a witness is of a different race than the person he claims to recognise should be judged carefully.
Bert