Partial Face Transplant Patient

As the Associated Press has recently reported in major newspapers such as the Washington Post and the Boston Herald, the woman who received the first partial face transplant one year ago has adjusted to her new face. As she observed, “It may be someone else’s face, but when I look in the mirror I see me.”

The woman became a candidate for the novel procedure when her own face was badly disfigured from a dog bite. As reported last year, there were both medical and ethical concerns with trying this procedure. From a medical standpoint, there was always the possibility that the woman —like any transplant patient—might reject the transplanted material; as a result, the woman had to take a regimen of immunosuppressant drugs.

From an ethical stanpoint, the issues surrounding this procedure are multiple:

1. As with other patients who could benefit from transplant procedures, there are questions about how to obtain suitable organs (in this case, the tissue came from a multiple organ donor who was brain dead).
2. There are questions about the types of patients on which this procedure should be done (should this done, as in this instance, only on cases of extreme disfigurement?).
3. This news story vividly illustrates how, in the arena of medical innovation, technological and psychological developments must both be addressed simultaneously. Although this particular woman appears to have adjusted admirably (after undergoing counseling before being given the procedure), others might not be so psychologically adaptive—especially given how central a person’s face is to self-identity.