A real life Face/Off

Many action buffs and fans of John Travolta and Nicholas Cage saw this 1997 flick which had the two stars trading faces in a completely ridiculous medical procedure. At least, that’s what I thought when I first saw the movie. How could the face of one be transplanted onto another person and appear the same?

It would seem that some surgeons in the US have an answer to that. They’ve managed to perform the face transforming surgery on cadavers and now want to try it for real.

This story from BBC News claims that that doctors in Cleveland believe that they can take the face of from a dead donor and transplant the “new” face onto a patient with a disfigured face.

The chance it will work is around 50% and experts have expressed safety and ethical concerns about the procedure.

The new face would neither resemble the donor nor the recipient as it will apparently conform itself to the skeleton of the recipient. The recipient would, of course, have to take powerful anti-rejection drugs for their lifetime with unknown risks. The social stigma of a disfigured face might seem enough to have people go through this procedure, but the emotional barriers of suddenly loosing ones face and for people to accept a new face on a known person might be hard to overcome.

To top it, there are countless ethical and legal issues that need to be encountered before this procedure will be readily available and acceptable. It is unlikely that, like in the movie, the transformation could happen without any ill effects. But perhaps in choice situations, this might be a viable option for those who would truly benefit from this surgery.

Cheers

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