The Ethics of Face Transplants

Courier-Journal: Doctors prepared to do face transplant

Even as ethicists and others raise concerns, a team of doctors from Louisville and the Netherlands says it is ready to perform a face transplant.

"There arrives a point in time when the procedure should simply be done. We submit that that time is now," the researchers wrote in an article scheduled for publication today in The American Journal of Bioethics.

The article, by the team from the University of Louisville and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, explores the ethical and psychological issues, and physical risks, involved in a transplant that would attach the face of a dead donor to someone with a severely disfigured face, such as the victim of a serious burn or accident.

Although researchers will not say when such a transplant would be done, they are taking steps toward the first operation, which would be considered clinical research.

Here's all that matters to me:

"Previous research and current understanding indicate that the psychological risks are more complex and extensive than the Louisville team suggest," [Nichola Rumsey of the University of the West of England] wrote. "I have no wish to minimize the distress experienced by many people with severe disfigurements, but to my mind, the current risk/benefit ratio ... is dubious at best."

[...]

"Our position is that face transplantation could now be performed," wrote three surgeons from Henri-Mondor Hospital in Paris. "The switch from 'could' to `should' depends on the ethical conditions surrounding the procedure."

Copyright 2004 The Courier-Journal.

The only ethical considerations that truely matter are whether or not the participants in the procedure voluntarily consent to it. Everything else is secondary.

Posted by Drizzten at September 17, 2004 05:03 PM