From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.inka.de)
Date: Thu Nov 28 2002 - 12:31:50 MST
Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
> Oh, now this is really interesting. The BBC is reporting
> that face transplants may be feasible soon and there should
> be some discussion of the ethics of doing this.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2516181.stm
As usual, I fail to understand the "ethical" aspects of this. The
quoted article calls for "a moral and ethical debate" but leaves
me entirely in the dark what to debate about. Is there some mystical
property ascribed to the face in contrast to other organ assemblies?
> (Maybe morphable faces or cameleon faces -- but actual *transplants*?)
Transplants are not all that attractive due to the foreign tissue
rejection aspect.
> There has to be a Hollywood adventure film in these ideas someplace.
While it doesn't involve an actual transplant, "Shattered" uses a
similar premise. It's entirely unrealistic, of course.
If you think that lopping off my facial tissue and putting it on
your skull will make you look like me, I suspect you will be
disappointed. The forensics people reguarly make rather good
predictions what a dead person's face used to look like, working
merely from a recovered skull. The facial bones are at least as
important as the soft tissue in determining what your face generally
looks like.
What we are talking about here is restoring some sort of human
appearance and the accompanying psychological benefits to seriously
disfigured people. The results will not make you a candidate for
a beauty pageant.
> Now of course, if you can transplant an entire face, it seems to make
> sense that you could transplant half a face. So on my left half
> I have Anders and on my right half I have Damien but inside I'm Robert.
> What a strange concept.
Seems we are broaching the dreaded identity discussion again.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:28 MST