Mick
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 Posted: 12/18/05 - 16:18 Post subject: UK go-ahead for first full face swap |
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Two weeks after the world’s first partial face transplant was carried out in France, surgeons in UK have been given a permit to go ahead with a full face transplant. The operation will replace an entire disfigured face with a dead person's face.
This procedure as well as the one in France rose a lot of ethical questions. However, Professor Peter Butler, a consultant plastic surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London, won approval from the hospital's ethics committee to find a suitable patient.
Professor Butler doesn’t intend to burden the NHS about these expensive procedures and is hoping to raise £20,000 to cover each of five transplants planned.
The hardest part of the whole procedure would be to find a suitable patient. The selection depends on psychological and physical factors.
The biggest concern of the people involved is that the face of the donor would be recognizable on the person who received it. Professor Butler who has been doing research in this area for the last ten years said that a computer simulation has shown that a donor family would not recognize the face on the recipient.
Public opinions about the procedures are divided. Sixty percent of the people questioned said they would not object the operation being performed.
However, public opinion is not worth much and resistance from the Royal College of surgeons is expected because of their negative view back in 2003. |
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