‘Quiet deaths, ethical slippage’.
For 15 years, Richard Norris had a face too hideous to show. Then, one day, writes a [s]GQ[/s] journalist, a maverick doctor gave him a miracle too fantastic to believe. Richard got a face transplant, ‘a new life, and a new set of burdens too strange to predict’.
An article in [s]The Lancet[/s] says the changing difference to patients has generated ethical concerns about the exposure of otherwise young and healthy individuals to the sequelae of lifelong, high-dose, multidrug immunosuppression. Nevertheless, it notes, advances in immunomodulatory and immunosuppressive protocols, microsurgical techniques, and computer-aided surgical planning have enabled broader clinical application of this procedure to patients.
An article in [s]Anthropology Today[/s] describes the operation as a highly experimental medical treatment and says patients who are otherwise healthy are dying as a consequence of submitting themselves to the operation. The authors say they are concerned with the ‘quiet deaths and ethical slippages’ that are emerging in this new medical terrain.
[link url=http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201408/richard-norris]Full GQ report[/link]
[link url=http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2962632-X/fulltext]The Lancet article[/link]
[link url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12004/abstract]Anthropology Today abstract[/link]