Face transplants...

[fafalone]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/05/26/face.transplant/index.html

 

Personally I don't see any ethical dilemma not rooted in overvalueing appearances, but what does everyone else think (noting the part where the procedure is designed only for those with severe disfigurement, had to add this comment for those bound to comment without fully reading the story)?

[admiral_ju00]

whaaaaaa, you mean i can't get my wife to look like Neve Campbell? damnit

 

j/k.

 

and holy crap, that article is talking about MY UNIVERSITY :D :D

i guess moving to Kentucky wasn't such a bad idea.

 

seriously though, this is great, especially for the burn victims and other such misfortunate people.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The problem is that it'll probably be misused to supplement plastic surgery.

[Skye]

I doubt it would be misused to treat trivial cases. You would have to be severely disfigured for it to be worth the immuno-suppression. Even with immuno-suppressants the immune system is active to some level and will attack the attached tissue. This is hardly going to lead you looking pretty

[mooeypoo]

The problem is that it'll probably be misused to supplement plastic surgery.

Everything is misused today, that's why we're putting this subject under "Biomedical Ethics"...

Ahh heck. If we actually manage to *keep* the ethics on this one, it sounds like it can actually do lots of good for people with severe disfigurements, or people that has been through accidents and such.

 

Obviously it opens up the entire "Bin-Laden can look like sidney crawford" business and people would start getting all paranoid -- but then again, as I've said in the beginning of this post, everything can be misused and taken advantage of.

 

We'll just have to make sure it STAYS ethical, I guess.

 

~moo

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

How can he look like Sidney Crawford unless he steals her face?

[mooeypoo]

It was an EXAMPLE!

 

 

~moo

[Dave]

Obviously it opens up the entire "Bin-Laden can look like sidney crawford" business and people would start getting all paranoid -- but then again, as I've said in the beginning of this post, everything can be misused and taken advantage of.

 

To be fair, it'd be pretty obvious if someone was to 'steal' someone else's face anyway - I daresay that there would be a big difference in skin pigmentation and various other rather large and obvious signs. It does offer lots of hope for those with outstanding cases though, so I'm all for it.

[mooeypoo]

uh well why the need to steal anything? I'm sure that if this exists, soon we'll be able to just CREATE a face.

 

SPECIALLY with the new gene manipulation tests that goes around and we hear about a lot lately...

 

THAT would be scary.

 

~moo

[Dave]

uh well why the need to steal anything?

 

Well, place yourself in the position of some random terrorist who happens to have a lot of money and the police are monitoring you. The ability to have a face transplant and hence lose any kind of police monitoring would be rather handy.

[YT2095]

it sounds like a great idea at face value

[Dave]

ouch. that hurt.

 

Btw, anyone seen Face Off? It's all about face transplants (only stupidly unscientific)?

[mooeypoo]

yes good movie for its time.

 

By the way what I meant was that instead of STEALING an already existing face, why not CREATING a new one.

 

I'm sure that it shouldn't be as big of a problem as it used to be, now that face transplant is actually available.

By the way, I can't help but wondering who's going to be the donors... err.. would any of you go with a dead-guy's face? Will it be like those cards you own for "Transplants Approval" in case anything bad happens to you?

 

Augh I can hear the doctors.. "Your son was in a bad fire, his face was completely burned, but don't worry, we just found three potential donor for you that died just a few moments ago in the OR -- gang fight. Care to pick a face?"

 

I know it sounds "funny.." err but that wasn't supposed to.. erhm... well would you take a face off a donor!?

 

 

~moo

[Dave]

By the way what I meant was that instead of STEALING an already existing face' date=' why not CREATING a new one.

 

I'm sure that it shouldn't be as big of a problem as it used to be, now that face transplant is actually available.[/quote']

 

I don't believe it's possible to actually grow skin, let alone skin on a specific part of the body - i.e. the face. Even if it was, we certainly don't have the technology to age the skin to the age of the person wanting the transplant.

[mooeypoo]

Uh how different is growing a skin using clones or something (we have THAT technology, or we will pretty soon) and attatching it to a person's face later, to transplanting an "existing" skin?

 

~moo

[Dave]

Uh how different is growing a skin using clones or something (we have THAT technology, or we will pretty soon) and attatching it to a person's face later, to transplanting an "existing" skin?

 

We don't have the technology to clone people safely yet - we can hardly manage it with sheep. However, that's beside the point. What you're saying is that we should grow a clone and (effectively) kill them to get the face skin. There's a couple problems with this:

 

1) It's horribly unethical and immoral.

2) The clone will grow at the same rate as the person who wants the transplant; hence it would be years before the procedure could take place.

 

What I was talking about was growing a selected part of the body (in the same way as producing organs) - effectively I was talking about growing a new face at an accelerated rate, which is beyond our means.

 

In order for your method to work, you'd have to grow clones (which would be sentient beings) in order to harvest organs; this is an area of great ethical debate, and is one of the reasons why scientists are so touchy about human cloning.

[mooeypoo]

We do have the technology to clone human PARTS like ears and a nose. Why can't we grow a face? Even so, we surely will have it SOON enough.

though I doubt that's a good thing. It's one thing having a rat carrying a human ear on its back, can you actually imagine a rat having a human face? eugh.

 

And dave, about your points, I completely agree, but allow me to be perfectly blunt right now on answering:

1) It's horribly unethical and immoral.

Since when did that ever bother humanity?

 

2) The clone will grow at the same rate as the person who wants the transplant; hence it would be years before the procedure could take place.

It takes years and years for a tree to grow thick enough for us to use it for PAPER-making. If we're going to be unethical, here's a perfect way to start.

 

I completely agree, don't get me wrong, I just don't have as much faith in humanity as you do.

 

~moo

[Dave]

We do have the technology to clone human PARTS like ears and a nose. Why can't we grow a face? Even so, we surely will have it SOON enough.

 

I'm not entirely sure that technology exists yet; even so, we don't have the technology to accelerate the growth process..

 

Since when did that ever bother humanity?

 

I would hope that it would bother the governments enough to outlaw it. True, some people will almost certainly want clones just in case something gives in, but that doesn't necessarily mean everyone's gonna go around doing it.

 

It takes years and years for a tree to grow thick enough for us to use it for PAPER-making. If we're going to be unethical, here's a perfect way to start.

 

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say

[admiral_ju00]

would any of you go with a dead-guy's face?

~moo

 

that brings a question like:

do i get to wear a dead guy's/girl's face or do i buy a neat little face mask and wear it for the rest of my life.........

 

absolutely.

 

We do have the technology to clone human PARTS like ears and a nose. Why can't we grow a face? Even so' date=' we surely will have it SOON enough.[/quote']

 

the Human Genome project was just the end of the beguining as it was said by the guy running it. we do not know what the majority of the genes do or how to control them. to understand and be able to manipulate genetic info at will, will still take lots and lots of time.

 

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

 

i believe i've recently read something about japanese embryo cloning, but that only reach 100 cells or so........

[Skye]

A South Korean group cloned a few human embryos last year and harvested them for stem cells.

[mooeypoo]

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say

Well you said it´s unethical to grow fields of clones just for the purpose of organ donations. I agree completely, I just have less faith in humanity -- it's unethical to destroy the rainforests too, and like clones trees take years to grow enough for us to use them to create paper -- and we still do it.

 

I hope we won't do that with clones, but I have to say you cannever know. Specially if instead of FULL clones we'll grow human faces on the ass of a baboon.

 

And Skye, I find that hard to believe - there were rumors, but nothing more.. if there really WERE clones that were stable enough to actually give anything for "harvest" I'd say it wouldn't stop with just a small ad on the paper.... just a suspicion I have.I might be wrong of course.

 

and Admiral --

do i get to wear a dead guy's/girl's face or do i buy a neat little face mask and wear it for the rest of my life.........

Point taken. Still .. it's hard enough knowing you go around with someone else's heart / or carnia or anything else for that matter... think about going with his FACE.

 

~moo

[Dave]

Well you said it´s unethical to grow fields of clones just for the purpose of organ donations. I agree completely, I just have less faith in humanity -- it's unethical to destroy the rainforests too, and like clones trees take years to grow enough for us to use them to create paper -- and we still do it.

 

Although my faith in humanity is rapidly diminishing, I would still hope that your average person would be able to tell the difference between a tree and a sentient being. However, you do have a point; if some politician who is being paid an awful lot of money by cloning companies comes along, I'm fairly sure that they'd put enough spin on it to make it start sounding appealing to some people.

[Skye]

mooey, I posted a thing on the cloned embryos in the news section for it when it happened,

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2954

 

I actually came back to this thread to say that I saw a story on the news of a little girl who had suffered severe burns and had been successfully treated with skin grafts grown in vitro. Can't find a link about it though.