Posted on 12/09/2005 6:51:42 PM PST by LifeSite News
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."
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesite.net ...
What? That's disgusting!
susie
I know. This story creeps me out.
Now I know why the whole "face transplant" made me feel queasy.
coconutt2000 wrote:
"Now I know why the whole "face transplant" made me feel queasy."
--I had a gut feeling there was more to it than just "getting a body" to get a face from. It's freaky stuff and with "cloning" and genetic engineering, i have this feeling we're going to see alot of "frankenstein" stuff in dark labs somewhere.
This is a rather meaningless story. Once people are declared brain dead, their organs can be harvested (that is the term) and this is completely in keeping with the donor's wishes. The person is dead, they are being kept alive artificially, and whether the organs are harvested before or after the ventilator is removed is inconsequential. The headline here is misleading to state the donor was "living." They were dead according to all legal and medical definitions and as defined by specific laws that govern organ donation. This was France, but I believe every state in the union has similar provisions.
It is assisted suicide. That's why I am not a donor.
Most "scientists" have no sense of ethics.
Why does anything surprise me anymore? We seem to have fewer and fewer ethics as time goes on.
** NAZI (NANCY) PELOSI **
Right. Dead is dead. If another person can live, that is a tremendous legacy. Why dwell on the macabre angle?
wow I wouldn't be able to face something like that
I think it is interesting that the life expectancy (I think I read 76 or 77) is so celebrated. I don't recall the percentage of those that were on meds but it was significant in my opinion.
We do not want to pay for health care that affords that same life expectancy and it certainly would not look good to the world if our life expectancy dropped.
Is it really an increase in life expectancy that we care about or is it the fact the claim can be made? Afterall, if we do not pay for health care ultimately life expectancy will drop.
Is this type of medicine only producing some artificial or selective life expectancy? Will those who reach the life expectancy then be less important to society because they will not affect the statistics?
Those legal definitions are based on the medical theory of "brain death". Unfortunately, there are documented survivors of "brain death" that call the theory into question.
It was pushed because scientists and doctors wanted to experiment with organ transplants and this was the ethical white wash they came up with.
The scientific community are the purveyors of a "soylent green" mentality that will allow them to do what they want to do.
There is a subtle difference that the article intentionally tries to blur. One one hand, there is the definition of death, which is recognized by every major country and religion, including the Catholic Church. The definition of death is "The irreversible cessation of circulatory or brain function."
The controversy arises because there is no standard for irreversible cessation of brain function. Showing the lack of blood flow to the brain is the gold standard, but is not universally adopted, and surrogate examination techniques are used. The same thing is done with the traditional circulatory death, and often with much less rigorous standard.
The article quotes someone who was declared brain dead and survived as a way of undermining the definition of brain death. But there are lots more people out there who have been declared circulatory dead that are walking around, so that hardly makes the point.
The definition of death is sometimes used in pro-life circles to provide a definition of life, that is "The presence of brain and circulatory function."
Bwahahaha
OK. I'm done now.
Hey, check out the movie "Face Off" <(•¿•)>
Hey, check out the movie "Face Off" <(•¿•)>
Arghhhh!
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