Do I know you?

>Well, it’s about to hap­pen, the first trans­plant of human facial tis­sue to a liv­ing per­son. I think that it could be a great thing for the recip­i­ent but it seems to me that there is too much risk for a “non-vital” surgery. Recon­nect­ing thou­sands of nerves and blood ves­sels before the tis­sue degrades past usabil­ity seems like a very daugh­nt­ing task and if it goes wrong there is no going back! Also the patient will have to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his/her life which can lead to can­cer and kid­ney dis­func­tions. As far as the argu­ment of look­ing like some­one else I believe that this would not be an issue. First of all the per­son get­ting the surgery has had some hor­ri­ble acci­dent leav­ing them dis­fig­ured and unrec­og­niz­able (oth­er­wise why have the surgery) sec­ond the patients bone struc­ture will deter­mine the over­all look of the face.

Where is the brain trans­plant that we have been told so much about.

I believe grad­u­ally as the skin is recon­nected to the sur­round­ing tis­sue it will take on more of the patients orig­i­nal look. This is going to be an inter­est­ing med­ical tech­nol­ogy to behold and could hold great progress. We will have to wait and see. Also where is the brain trans­plant that we have been told so much about.

To learn more about facial trans­plants view this MSNBC article