Opinion: The face is unfamiliar

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The news that surgeons in Cleveland had performed the first face transplant in the United States sounds like the ultimate tabloid story, not to mention the 1997 movie ‘Face/Off’ in which John Travolta and Nicolas Cage swapped mugs. In this case, of course, one of the faces came from a cadaver. I suspect that the ‘Eew’ factor in this procedure will prevent otherwise thoughtful people from realizing that operations like this are not just morally permissible but a blessing.

Let’s, er, face it: Human beings imbue the face with extraordinary importance. When someone is described as good-looking, the assumption is that the reference is to her or his face, not to other parts of the anatomy, however alluring. Newspaper articles about prominent personalities are usually illustrated with ‘head shots,’ not body shots. A purported family resemblance almost always refers to a familiar (or familial) face, not a lookalike torsos. My nephew Stephen is often told that he’s the image of his uncles, but he’s 6 foot tall and my brother and I are 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-8 respectively. He’s a McGough only from the neck up, but that’s all that matters in the family’s ‘Who does he look like?’ inquiry.

Your face isn’t just your fortune; it’s you. That, rather than a generic discomfort with organ transplants, explains why the idea of a face transplant is so disorienting. Yet it’s precisely because of the importance we attach, as it were, to faces that this sort of surgery should be welcomed and perfected.

Besides, the patients who will agree to this onerous operation won’t be the Botox clientele; they’ll be severely disfigured and maybe dysfunctional as well. According to the Associated Press, the patient in Cleveland had suffered injuries so horrific that ‘she lacked a nose and palate, and could not eat or breathe on her own without a special opening into her windpipe.’ Why should a taboo, however rooted in our sense of self, stand in the way of relief for someone like that?

AP photo by Tony Dejak