Surgeons ready to perform face transplant

A TEAM of Dutch and American surgeons claim they are ready to perform a face transplant, a procedure considered controversial by some medical ethicists.

“There arrives a point in time when the procedure should simply be done. We submit that that time is now,” the doctors wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics.

The procedure attaches the face of a dead donor to someone with a severely disfigured face, such as a burn or accident victim.

The doctors said they don’t have a prime candidate for the procedure, and they are not actively screening for candidates.

They have submitted an application to an institutional review board in the Netherlands and are nearly ready to submit one to an independent board in the United States. The doctors in Louisville, Kentucky, said they would not perform the transplant without approval from one of the boards, which are designed to protect medical research subjects’ rights.

“The people we’re considering are people who have no other options,” said Dr John Barker, director of plastic surgery research at the University of Louisville.

Nichola Rumsey of the University of the West of England in Bristol, an expert in psychosocial issues in medicine, said the ethical issues of the procedure have yet to be fully explored.

“Previous research and current understanding indicate that the psychological risks are more complex and extensive than the Louisville team suggest,” she wrote in the bioethics journal.

“I have no wish to minimise the distress experienced by many people with severe disfigurements, but the current risk/benefit ratio is dubious at best.”