Face transplants -ethical implications?

I have a question.  I just saw on the news the story about the woman who had the first face transplant.  She had her psychiatrist there with her there at the news conference and the news broadcaster said something like people had raised questions regarding her mental health in regards to her receiving the transplant because of the nature of the accident that led to her needing such a transplant (her dog had mauled her while she lay unconscious from a drug overdose --just another example of worthy versus unworthy people).  Also there are ethical questions, apparently.  So I'm wondering why all this talk about her mental fitness in regards to a transplant?  Just because it's a face?  Would we be hearing all this if she had received a liver?  Why not?

What's the assumption behind these questions?  That you are your face?  OMG.

Comments

[trillwing]

Ethical implications, I don't know about, but I'm nervous about asking who's more worthy of medical care than others.

I will say that I'm kind of creeped out by the whole thing. I mean, if my loved one had donated a heart or a liver, I'd be happy to see the recipient in the news. But would I want to be looking always at my loved one's facial skin on another person? I'm not so sure about that.

[barb]

Well, see, they say that the person doesn't really look like either the donor or themselves before they had the surgery. I imagine because the underlying bone structure is different. What they're implanting is the skin and muscles and nerve endings and all that.

But yeah, that really bothered me when they brought up the circumstances of her accident. Who cares why she was passed out?? what a dangerous precedent that sets. ticked me off.

[Bitch]

I'm somehow guessing that people wouldn't have been so concerned had she been in an accident, the result of a DUI. Drinking and driving... enough people have been foolish enough to do same or something similarly stupid (boating, biking, etc.) that they'd empathize.

But drugs! evil. She must be a sick person to do them, therefore that deservingness issue comes up: somehow, we have this bizarre hairshirt ethic in this country where you must suffer a lifetime of punishement for crossing certain moral lines.

[Alison]

No one can see your liver. Everyone can see your face. Until now, people who've been disfigured have had to live with their "new" face, and all the emotional baggage that goes with it.

With a face transplant comes the possibility of someone regaining a "normal" face, but one which is not their own.

No, we shouldn't be our face, but let's, uh, face it: it's our most identifying feature.

[Limey]

I thought that she had passed out from a drugs overdose because she had attempted suicide, not because she was a junkie?

The other issue that was raiased here was the fact that in order for the face to "take" ( ie the nerve ending splice together or somehting) she needed to rmeain very healthy or something but she had already started smoking very heavily; thus diminishing the chances of the operation being succesful.

Did you know that the guy who had one of the first complete hand transplants had it removed a couple of years afterwards? Dunno why...