A NEW FACE: A BOLD SURGEON, AN UNTRIED SURGERY by Michael Mason
quote:A team led by Dr. Siemionow is planning to undertake what may be the most shocking medical procedure to occur in decades: a face transplant.... As Dr. Siemionow envisions it, the series of operations will require rotating teams of specialists who may be deployed in more than one operating theater. The face to be transplanted will be removed, or "degloved," from a cadaver; it will most likely include the epidermis, along with the underlying fat, nerves and blood vessels, but no musculature. Surgeons also will remove the patient's own damaged facial tissue, then reattach the clamped blood vessels and nerves to the transplanted face. The procedures will take 15 hours, perhaps longer.
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The extended article in the NY Times highlights the fact that the faces of these patients have been damaged through disease (cancer) or accident (fire) or birth defect. Sometimes there are multiple surgeries that are never able to leave the patient looking normal. These would be the instances that might indicate a face transplant. The controversy is over the fact that the rejection rate for transplanted skin tissue is very high, and this is a cosmetic, rather than an organ transplant.
But oh, the science fiction possibilities here. There was the 1999 movie "Face Off" with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage that used this storyline.
However, I find the whole concept creepy in real life. It's hard to imagine waking up and looking like someone else. For the rest of your life.
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Don't these patients already look like someone else? Other than themselves, I mean, since their faces are grossly damaged. Maybe better to look like someone else nicely than someone else horribly.
They probably wouldn't look like the cadaver, though, given that the face is being placed on a different bone structure and musculature. I suspect that someone with high cheekbones will look different with the same face of someone without.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited July 26, 2005).]
I think in order to truly make someone look like someone else, you have to change the underlying bone structure.
You've all seen photos, haven't you, of when they reconstruct a face from a skull in order to try to find someone who might recognize the dead person? The bone structure is what makes the difference.
And because of that, I wonder how much good a face transplant will do someone who needs reconstruction of the jaw or other parts of the face. Putting someone else's skin on top of a deformed or damaged skull is not going to do much good.
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Just a note... the article says the surgeon plans to transplant the muscular tissue as well as the skin tissue. Yes, it will be fitting over a different bone. So the face won't be exactly like the cadavers.
But can you IMAGINE the horror if you were a relative of the deceased running into the transplant patient on the street, wearing your dead mother or sister's face??? Even with different bone structure, I wonder if the face would be recognizable??
I also wonder about those articles that claim there is cellular memory, that people who have had organ transplants begin to have memories and flashes of "knowing" that could only have come from the organ donor.
Like I said, there is a good sci-fi tale here somewhere ... heh.
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That not SF. It's pretty clearly in the "horror" catagory. And the text you quoted very clearly said no musculature would be transplanted.
Really, the term "degloved" says it all. We are talking about a peice of uncured leather with holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. We are not talking about a face.
Still, I think that getting tissue from cadavers is gross enough without having it on your face.
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I heard about this last winter, and I thought about writing a story about a woman whose husband got in a fiery car accident with her brother in the car. The brother died and the husband got his face. But now the woman has a husband who looks like her brother.
I can't actually write this story; I've tried. I think it sounds cool, but it's not mine to tell. If anyone wants it, it's up for grabs.
quote:They have already released test foods that do not differ in taste from traditional foods they imitate
You know, they always say that about substitutes, but I have never found it to be true. But then, I'm the one who can taste the difference between different brands of milk...
If they're gonna make something out of blood, why do they have to make a substitute for something else? Why can't they just make a new, unique product? I still wouldn't eat it, but at least I wouldn't be disgusted by the thought of eating milk or yogurt made from blood. Yyrch.
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Another headline from Russia, "Russian Media Hails Spammer’s Murder." Really, it was only a matter of time.
Although I'm aware of the Biblical injunction against eating blood, I'm not inclined to see an intrinsic difference between eating blood and any other part of an animal.
But having something grafted onto my face is different. At least if it were just a question of smearing a dead guy's blood all over my face, I could wash it off.
The rolleyes was just because we'd moved to the logical point of talking about Hannibal Lecter. You have to roll your eyes once that happens in a conversation between theoretically non-insane adults.
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I really don't have a problem with eating blood, although it's not something I wish to do myself. After all, people have been eating blood sausage for a long time. But these people are turning it into something they're calling milk. Rice and soy milk are nasty enough, we don't need any more substitutes.
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I think the Germans or Swiss have a chocolate law. Or is that beer?
Has anybody tried the Filipino dish Dinaguan? It's a blood goo that they mix with rice. My wife and kids like it, but to my mid-western eyes, it looks extremely nasty. In twelve plus years of marriage, I've never even come close to tasting it.
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I thought "Face Off" was incredibly unbelievable because of the whole underlying bone structure problem. I don't really have much of an opinion about the advancing science one way or another. I suppose part of me says "ew" but then again, most of me says "ew" when I see a grossly disfigured face so...
For those of us who write science fiction the trick is to find the next level of horror...how about a partial brain transplant? Now that would make for some good horror. I might have to write a short story with that tool...not the frontal lobe, that would be too easy and predictable...hmmmm
BTW Elan: that link asks you to register before you get access to the article.
This was probably already mentioned. There was a recent documentary about this procedure and the surgeons practiced on cadavers for years before thinking themselves able to try it on a living person.
As part of the process, they took 'before' and 'after' photos to hundreds of plastic and reconstructive surgeons. For one test these photos were 'mixed in' with images of un-transplanted faces and none could pick the transplanted faces nor, when revealed, could easily identify the 'new' face as being the same face as the 'old' face. A psychologists, (for those with faith in pschlochologists) went on to say how about 80% of communication is non-verbal, as in gestures, facial expressions etc. These all aid us in recognising and identifying others. As the recipient of the transplanted face retains all their nonverbal cues mannerisms, expressions etc, the risk of identification is reduced. This coupled with the fact that the 'new' face looks like a cross between the two 'old' faces reduces the chances of identification to being basically impossible.
They said the worst reaction a loved one might have is feeling that there was something about that person that reminded them of their dead loved one.
By 'cross between the two 'old faces' I guess they mean sort of like the midway point between two people in that 'morphing' video-clip Michael Jackson put out.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited December 04, 2005).]
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This guy has been doing hand transplants. :shudder: Of course, tissue memory has application to all kinds of transplants. P.S. On the tissue memory thing, I think the phenomenon of LDS flashbacks is established. But I think it's possible that our whole biochemical milieau is preserved in whatever fat cells we are filling at a given time. Which could be why it's so tough to lose weight.
You get things moving and then you get to the layer of fat that started it all, and the feelings of sadness or anger or whatever made you fat in the first place start bogging you down. Maybe. I don't know. It's just a thought. I do think we sublimate a lot of unpleasant emotions into various kinds of muscle strain and psychosomtice dis-eases. I don't think it could be called organic memory, because the body isn't in that sense very complex. But maybe the organic memory in the brain is more vertical in nature whereas tissue memory is lateral. It's not much for specifics but gives the breadth of the experience.
I think the movie "Return to me" only worked because it had Fox Mulder in it, and we as an audience were used to him taking nonsense deadly serious. It wasn't one of my favorite films, I wouldn't say it was even a good film. But it carried a very weak premise further than most films could. Unlike, say, that one with Christian Slater whose name I can't recall.
If tissue memory were a big problem, I think we'd hear more about it from liver transplants. I mean, most people don't think much of the liver, but it's where the umbilical cord attaches before we are born. It's a pretty significant organ. Though most people who have transplanted livers have to be on scads of drugs.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited December 06, 2005).]
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Nobody ever got around to bringing up Gary Larson's initial concept sketch for what became "Scene from The Return of the Nose of Dr. Verlucci" Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I realize I am a lurker but your juxtaposition of LSD with LDS made me LOL here at denny's (its where i get me best work done both academically and creatively)
I am 10 days from graduation at a small state uni in Cedar City, UT and needless to say the LDS influence is considerable. Its like baptists in the rural south.
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