The Cleveland Clinic has received a bioethics board's approval to conduct a human facial transplant. (Background on face transplants here.) From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Doctors say that the psychological makeup of the patient – expectations, self-image and the ability to cope with a drastically changed appearance – is critical to the success of transplants.
Conflict about these and other issues has always been part of the transplant frontier. But the face, because it is so tied to identity, generates a particularly emotional reaction.
"It's jolting in a certain sense because it's such a personal thing," Dr. Stuart Youngner, chairman of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, said in an interview. "It's you more than your kidneys are you. The face and eyes are windows into the soul, the person."
