A few years back, John Travolta and Nicholas Cage were able to trade faces in “Face Off.” The movie was based around the ability to be able to conduct a full facial transplant. Although years ago it may have seemed like science fiction, today it’s praised as a medical breakthrough.
Reports by CNN were that there have been five successful facial transplants worldwide within the past 10 years. More recently, doctors in the United States completed their first-ever facial transplant on an unidentified woman giving her the ability to eat, smell and even blink. The entire procedure lasted 22 hours and had total of eight surgeons to transfer muscles, arteries, veins, nerves and other tissue.
Although this is considered a medical breakthrough, what makes a person eligible to receive a facial transplant? If a person is mauled by an animal, in a horrific accident or badly burned — what makes them better than others to receive the face of a person who has recently died?
According to MSNBC, only patients who had exhausted all options are considered for the transplant. If a person is stuck in isolation, depressed, unable to survive comfortably and has no other option they are on the top of the list.
Face transplants are done to improve the quality of life. “The human identity is the face,” said Spanish surgeon Pedro Cavadas. “It’s that which allows us to distinguish a human being from other animals.”
Although facial transplants are fantastic for those who are suffering, the ethical issues that come with the procedure have gotten people talking. Considering patients receive the face of a dead person, it can create psychological issues for the deceased person’s family and friends. You can be walking down the street and see someone with the face of your dead loved one. How should people deal with that?
Luckily, surgeons were smart and created ethical guidelines. According to medscape.com, there is a need for psychological screening of all potential patients. “Rules for valid consent require that patients be informed and competent,” said Kenneth W. Goodman, the director of bioethics at University of Miami, Fla.
Many times transplants won’t respond and patients need to understand the consequences of having to start at square one.
Dr. Eric Kadish, a bioethicist at Cleveland Clinic said, “We believe the ethical basis for this endeavor is beyond reproach. We can anticipate that some may be concerned that this will be used as a means of identity transfer or a cosmetic technique, yet it must be limited to the medical context and not used as cosmetic enhancement.”
Although this may be an upgrade for those who want to change identities, a facial transplant does not closely resemble the donor or the patient, but is a composite of the two reported medscape.com.
If a person is unable to face the world, it is only right that people brush aside ethical issues and give others the life they have wanted. It is like any other organ transplant, only this time if the patient looks in the mirror, they see the donor looking back.
Kara Bautch is a senior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.