Ethical Issues Posed by Face Transplants

A face transplant is as challenging a surgical procedure as any patient can undergo. In this introduction I present the medical aspects of this surgery, the profound ethical issues it raises, and optimal interventions that clinicians can pursue to help these patients and their loved ones. I then discuss how to help other kinds of patients and loved ones who confront similar stresses. I end by presenting a goal that author Sharrona Pearl puts forth after she studied many face transplant patients. The efforts she urges should maximize our capacity to see face transplant patients—and anyone—as they are, as opposed to how they look.