Letters to the Editor
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This is ridiculous
I think this is another issue of people getting all upset about absolutely nothing. There is no special moral issue here. If you transplanted the skin of Angelina Jolie's face onto yours you would not look like Angelina Jolie. Even Brad Pitt wouldn't recognize you. The shape of the face has more to do with the structure of the bones underneath than the skin itself. What you'd end up with is an entirely different looking individual who would probably look more like the original face than the donor face. Separate the facts from the sensationality of this story and you see that there's no large moral issue going on here because the reality of a face transplant and the Hollywood version are not the same thing.
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Broadsheet is Getting as Bad as the View
Broadsheet-or-ites,
While at the gym yesterday, I was forced to watch the innane babble of the women of "The View"--one topic? Cosmetic Face-Transplants. Their lack of insight into the human condition, their privileged musings about designer life, etc...it irritates me, but I have a refuge--the print media and most recently, Broadsheet. But then, waking up, listening to NPR, checking my email before breakfast, I take a quick peak at Broadsheet & then? The same innane and distracting nonsense of the mainstream media directed at women. Please, you can do better! You have done better. Take up the discussion up a bit!
Put something interesting on, something that matters--even something funny--but relevent!
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Soldiers and face transplants
Surely there are many male soldiers with disfiguring injuries who could use face transplants.
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Pot, meet kettle
Why question the New York Time's treatment of face transplants as a "women's issue" if you're discussing it on your "Women's Issue" blog?
It's all just a giant distraction to keep us from focusing on what's really important. If we're talking about face transplants, maybe we won't think about the bigger issues facing this country (and planet).
Sarah
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New Meaning.
Gives a whole new meaning to "You look like death warmed over."
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So what?
After the woman's lower face was bitten and scratched off by a dog, she gets a transplant of a dead woman's lower face skin and maybe some cartilage.
As another poster stated, the facial appearance mainly comes from the underlying bones - and even if it didn't, so what? As long as the dead woman providing the material was a legal donor, by her own word or her family's, what issue can there really be? If there is something wrong with having part of someone's face, should it be illegal to ask your plastic surgeon for a Kidman nose? Should it be illegal for the doctor to make it for you?
This is only discussed because it is relatively new - not because of any real merit.
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Face Off
Nobody in their right mind would have a face transplant done purely for cosmetic reasons. Especially when you take into consideration the possibility for rejection by your body of your new face. There is also the fact that just because you put Angelina Jolie's face on your head doesn't mean you're going to look like her. The skin is just a covering that will change according to the musculature of your face and your bone structure. That means there is very little chance that a donor's family members would ever recognize their loved one on the body of the recipient. These kinds of transplants are an option for people with severe disfigurement to give them a more normal appearance than traditional reconstructive surgery could achieve. Any other use is irresponsible.
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Only Angelina can be Angelina
Some simple science was ignored in the writing of this article. When the face transplant was performed on the French woman, her facial muscles were preserved. She also still had the same bone structure she was born with. So while she won't look exactly the same as she did before her accident, she also will not look at all like the donor.
In other words, while you could buy Angelina's "face," you couldn't look like her, since you couldn't buy her bone structure or musculature.
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The war on science
Forget the fictional war on Christmas, there's a real war on science going on in the US with half-truths and myths constantly being perpetuated about scientific advance. I have to agree with other letter writers that Salon is perpetuating ignorance with this little blurb about face transplants. I guess the truth isn't as sexy as the fantasy.
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missing the point
I think a lot of this controversy about face transplants is ridiculous. If you have a fully intact face, undamaged by major trauma, the idea of getting a face transplant is silly and pointless. First of all, it is an incredibly risky procedure, both during the surgery and after if the body rejects the face. Secondly, a face transplant is never going to look as good as the original face. You are stretching skin and tissue over foreign bones. It may never heal properly, there will be scars and tissue damage. For this reason, putting Angelina Jolie's face over a "ugly" woman’s skull is going to look worse than both Jolie and the woman.
In the french case, the woman receiving the face transplant had the entire lower part of her face gnawed off by a dog. The transplant was done to give her some sort of normalcy and a chance to actually look in the mirror, possibly go through life without wearing a mask every day. There is still a huge risk her body will reject the face, which would lead to even worse disfigurement than before and dangerous life-threatening complications.
The intent of the surgery was to improve the quality of life for a severely disfigured woman. While some may question the motives of the doctors in moving so quickly "to be first," let's not confuse this with a beverly hills plastic surgery issue. It is more along the lines of skin grafts for burn victims than nose jobs for vain socialites.
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Face transplants: the most obvious users
What I find most interesting is the silence from those most likely to want to use the new face transplant techniques: m-f transexuals. As a group, we are the ones most likely to want to change our facial appearance: notice the growth in facial-feminizing surgery (FFS) from surgeons in the: U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. At present, we can have hair transplants, vocal cord surgery and voice training, facial bone re-contruction, and now a new face on top of the sculpted bones. The only surgery missing, and one I believe will become available in a few years is: Uterine transplants. I sincerely wish these techniques could have been available to me much sooner in my life, as I would, and still do, spare no expense to be as plausible as possible and to be able to have a child.
Petra