And now for something completely different: A face-transplant…

Isabelle Dinoire before she was mauled by her dog.

The ” Before” picture of the recipient of France’s first transplant. She was the victim of a dog mauling. (not to be confused with the recent Face-transplant done in the US, last month)

Months after the operation, and a year later.

Side view “After”.

A close-up of the “year later” pic. (Theres’ something very spooky about it, as though the eyes don’t match the face – reminiscent of an James Bond villain who’s wearing a mask.)

First Ever Face Transplant – Face Came from Live Donor

1999 parliamentary committee told that body parts donors “are sick, they are dying. They are living and not dead.”

By John-Henry Westen

AMIENS, France, December 9, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Much controversy has been made over the first-ever face transplant surgery conducted in France on a 38-year-old woman Isabelle Dinoire who was attacked by a dog. Covered by the media in recent days, the surgery was performed November 26-27 in a hospital in Amiens. The controversy has revolved around two aspects of the operation and totally ignored a third – and the most disturbing of the controversies surrounding the operation.

Ethicists and experts the world over have been discussing the need of the transplant recipient to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life and of the psychological consequences of having a different face. Ignored however has been the fact that the face, in order to be transplanted had to come from a live donor – heart beating and still breathing.

Dr. Iain Hutchison, an oral-facial surgeon at Barts and the London Hospital, told the BBC: “The transplant would have to come from a beating heart donor.” Hutchison, who is chief executive of Saving Faces – the Facial Surgery Research Foundation, explained, “So, say your sister was in intensive care, you would have to agree to allow their face to be removed before the ventilator was switched off.” (See the BBC coverage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4484728.stm )

Doctors in the UK are arguing that since the first two objections are easily answerable in the case of face transplants since having a horrifically disfigured face would eclipse the risks of the anti-rejection drugs and the psychological trauma of having a different face. Writing an editorial in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Peter E M Butler, a UK consultant plastic surgeon and colleagues conclude, “Now that research has made the concept of facial transplant a reality, concerns about long term immunosuppression do remain. But, instead of considering why facial transplantation cannot be justified, we may find it hard to justify why it should not be done.” (see the BMJ editorial http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7529/1349?eh… )

The reason why the issue of the need for live donors is being ignored is “brain death”, a concept first invented in the late 60’s in order to allow for transplantation of vital organs. While vital organ transplants have become more readily available they are by no means universally approved of by medical professionals and ethicists.

Dr. John Shea, M.D. a medical consultant for Campaign Life Coalition told LifeSiteNews.com that “there is no general agreement that brain death is death.” He said moreover that “criteria for establishing ‘brain death’ vary from England to the US and through the other countries of Europe.”

The Sunday Times revealed that the donor of the face was also a 38-year-old woman who had attempted suicide and was declared ‘brain dead’ on arrival at hospital.

In 1999, when the Canadian Parliament was examining the issue of vital organ donation a Parliamentary committee heard disturbing testimony about organ harvesting and criteria for declarations of ‘death’.

Ruth Oliver, a Vancouver psychiatrist who was declared clinically dead in 1977 at the Kingston General Hospital after suffering internal bleeding of the brain, was there in 1999 to tell the committee she is “living testimony that people survive” hospital declarations of death not based on solid criteria.

Dr. John Yun, a Richmond, B.C. oncologist, testified to the committee that organ harvesting was the impetus behind the brain death theory that has been accepted by the medical profession since 1968. In the 1980’s Yun worked in an ICU unit keeping brain dead patients on life support for organ transplants. Yun who had revised his position on the matter and believed such actions were wrong, told the committee, “We must not jump to the conclusion that a dubious definition of death — the medical hypothesis of brain death — is in fact death.”

Dr. Michael Brear, a Vancouver general practitioner, who has for 40 years been raising questions about the ethics of brain death, told the committee that “The so-called ‘beating-heart cadavers’ who are used as donors are in fact living patients. They are sick, they are dying. They are living and not dead.”

Dr. Brear notes that the first successful heart transplant harvesting took place in South Africa. He suggested that racism was behind the decision to approve the procedure since the operation took place under the old apartheid system and the donor was a black woman.

Dr Oliver noted, “unconscious or dying people are not people of lesser value. More and more ethicists, philosophers, and churches are rejecting brain death specifically for that reason.”

Indeed a ‘Statement Opposing Brain Death Criteria’ was published in 2000, signed by over 120 people from 19 nations, including physicans, philosophers, and theologians. Included in the list of signers were Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln in Nebraska and Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker in Oregon. (see the statement online http://www.lifestudies.org/jp/noshihantai.htm )