Face Transplants Good: Our Reactions Against People With Disfigurements, Not Good
Labels: Face Transplants. Connie Culp.
I guess face transplants--wherein a patient receives the "face" of a cadaver--are news because they are new. But I don't see why anyone would oppose them--at least as a reconstructive procedure. Case in point: The first American woman to receive this procedure after her face was literally blown away by a shotgun blast, has stepped forward to explain what it has meant to her. From the story:When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation's first face transplant recipient, she's stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she looks like now.
Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. Her face is bloated and squarish. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.
But Culp had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible. "I guess I'm the one you came to see today," the 46-year-old Ohio woman said at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic, where the groundbreaking operation was performed. But "I think it's more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person's face."
Now, this is a dangerous procedure. That means it should only be done in catastrophic circumstances. But you watch, sooner or later someone will want one as an enhancement. When and if that happens, the doctors should refuse.
But here's the question that really has me wondering: Why do we react so viscerally against people who are badly disfigured? The child's cruelty in the story was innocent, but it comes from somewhere within us. And I well remember the astonishingly cruel social fascism directed against my high school's "ugliest" girls. Even adults--myself included--sometimes need to discipline ourselves not to give into what seems a reflex revulsion when we come upon someone who is catastrophically disfigured. This phenomenon is real. What I don't understand is where it comes from, and why.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:25 AM
42 Comments
42 Comments:
Years ago "The Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris gave me my first logical insight into human attractiveness standards. Basically males are hardwired to seek females that are of reproductive age but have not yet reproduced. That translates to slim, young, and undamaged. Hence older men seeking younger women, women trying to look younger, etc.
It's all about making offspring that will in turn have the best chance to propagate your DNA.
(Feminists in particular PLEASE NOTE that this is just a description of a biological tendency, NOT an excuse or justification for male pigginess.)
That book has probably been superseded, it just happens to be the one that made a big splash and sticks in my head.
The same theory sees beautiful women tend to want men with money and power because that would be most protective. But even if this is so, it would explain not mating, but it doesn't explain the revulson.
Wesley, I think attraction and revulsion are more tightly coupled than you do. They're the opposite sides of the same coin.
Being revulsed by disfigured people primally and genetically encourages us to avoid getting disfigured. It subconsciously encourages us to be careful and avoid situations that might harm us.
The underlying issue, as I'm sure you'd agree, is that our society has COMPLETELY overlooked that our primal desires and aversions need to be understood and overcome when necessary. Just because we're arroused by something, doesn't mean we should act on it. Just because we feel like ending our life, doesn't mean it's the right decision. Just because we find someone physically revolting, doesn't mean we should indulge that revulsion and treat them poorly. In fact, what makes the human species so exceptional is our ability to rise above our biology, a point you're made many times.
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Ken: That is part of human exceptionalism: We uniquely have the ability to not give in to our impulses and perhaps instinctual drives and/or desires. (Dogs, trained animals, or domesticated animals that have been changed by contact with us, don't count.)
"Being revulsed by disfigured people primally and genetically encourages us to avoid getting disfigured. It subconsciously encourages us to be careful and avoid situations that might harm us."
Not only that, but it's a biological "stay away" alert. The revulsion acts as a mechanism for us to avoid mating with those that are "damaged".
I would also give a little leeway to a child because it is so out of the norm to see someone so disfigured, the term monster may have not been meant in a cruel way, but rather as an attempt to identify what they were seeing.
Becky,
I have a few spiritual cells in me now and that's probably why I'm writing this although I hate writing probably because of self preservation. Some people would say Victor, you're full of "IT" and I would probably reply how did you know?
Anyway it still hurts a little whenever I think of having visited my older brother in a hospital after he shot half of his face off with a three O three rifle. I recall him telling me in a hospital room that the doctors were going to make him look as good as Elvis. Between me and you his faces looked like doctor jackhell and hind!?
Years went by but no doctor fixed his face but he was a strong guy and between you and me, I honestly thought that they would fix his face cause he was once a good looking guy and the only thing going against him was that he was the black sheep of our family. I could write a book about him alone but to make a long story short, some girl moved in with him and she must have really hurt his feeling because to make another long story short he was charged with wanting to kill this girl. I knew my brother and if he had really wanted to kill her, he would have had no problem what so ever, anyway gullible him, he honestly thought that he would get bail because he had become a born again Christian and only told my older sister of his court date.
To make another very long story short he was sent to prison without bail and I later heard that a female district attorney brought forth all his priors and to make another very, very long story short, that night in his jail cell, the mental pain must have been too much cause he hug himself and there was cameras in the jail cells.
I better stop now before I get carried away!
God Bless His Soul!
I hear ya Wetley! Victor have you been drinking again?
Just a little!
God Bless,
Peace
It's very simple: what is beautiful is attractive and in some way harmonious; what is not repels us. I don't see a need to complicate matters or ask about it; it hardly needs analysis. It's the very same principle according to which life is better than death, and better is better than worse; human exceptionalism wants things to be better, doesn't it?
In fact it's the same principle as that of good being better than bad, and human exceptionalism values morality, doesn't it? Does anyone want themself, their home, their possessions to look unattractive rather than attractive? Same thing. Why we even be able to perceive beauty if it were not important and did not mean something? Naturally we are repelled by the opposite. It's one thing to say that every person has value; it's another to say that it's not normal to be repelled by what is unattractive, whether it's a person or anything else. If something is not in its ideal form, it's not attractive; simple as that.
Oh, come on Wesley. Ugly things are repulsive, and beautiful things aren't. It's a cultural construct, just like spiders, snakes and worms giving some people the creeps. If ugly things weren't repulsive the moonbats at Operation Rescue wouldn't be driving trucks festooned with pictures of aborted fetuses to get people's attention.
HistoryWriter, I would argue that it's a "cultural construct". The various definitions of idealized beauty vary from culture to culture, but the basic concepts of attractiveness don't. A curvy, bright eyed, shiny haired woman is attractive across all cultures. An over [or under] weight, dull looking one is not. Cultural markers (certain coloring, hip width, height, etc) affect the level of cultural desirability.
Meanwhile, I'd rather go around disfigured than with someone else's face, let alone a dead person's. Who cares what anyone says or thinks or how they react. It would be MY face, reflective of my life and being. Anybody doesn't like it, to hell with them. She looks just as worse now as she did before, frankly even worse worse, and how come the "miracle scientists" don't make public what they did to non-human animals in laboratory experiments "in order to be able to do this and help humans."
In fact if everyone is unique and equally important, one person's face shouldn't be given to another. I hope I'm never disfigured, but I wouldn't want someone else's face to solve the problem.
I met Sage Volkman more than 10 years ago. She was a burn victim who lost nose, eyelids, left ear and most of both hands when she was 5 years old. She had numerous surgeries to repair some of the damage. She grew up in Albuquerque and went on to earn a PhD. in Psychology to counsel burn victims. Most people agree that her scars are forgotten when you let her spirit touch yours.
HW-that was deep. Really deep.
As for why people treat disfigured individuals badly, I think in addition to evolution it has something to do with our innate fallenness/evil as human beings.
Even as a relatively attractive person, I used to be visciously harassed by other people for various reasons. I swear that there were times when I thought I could see or hear the devil in other people's eyes and words. For some reason, we have a propensity toward cruelty, and some people are more prone to it than others.
Ianthe: Every LIVING person is equally important. A cadaver is a body. I see no difference between transplanting a face and transplanting corneas or a kidney.
History Writer:
What makes it a "cultural construct"? What's your definition of that (is it different from the biological drives for mating and preservation, then?)
Cultural constructs, if there are any, re based on some sort of deliberate ned to assert a value for the survival of a particular group identity. So what is your explanation?
Surprising that almost all the comments are naturalistic. People who think people are made in the image of God and appreciate this fact would easily override the natural inclinations about deformities and disfigurations. I do it all the time, and I'd hope others would do it for me if I were different. Golden rule.
<< I see no difference between transplanting a face and transplanting corneas or a kidney.
Maybe, but the whole transplant phenomenon is not without its problems, and treating people as a collection of body parts is one of them. And people and hospitals who feel entitled to replacement organs are a large factor in the move to ditch the cardio pulmonary standard of determining death. Doctors now look at people in emergency rooms and sometimes think "there's a good organ donor" instead of "I hope and pray that guy pulls through" or "poor guy won't make it -I wonder if he has kids".
Personal opinion only:
Humans disobeyed God and fell from Grace, and now sin and evil has entered us. We are capable of sympathy and empathy; those are the good things that stuck with us after we fell. But because we empathize with others, we see something ugly and think, "I don't want that to happen to me!" So instead of being sympathetic and wanting to serve someone who is ugly, which is what Godly people do - which I am most obviously NOT, or I wouldn't be taking up so much time in the confessional - people like me freak in revulsion and have to stop ourselves from seeing these people as sub-human.
I thank God that He never called me to be a nun, because I'd end up disappointing Him so much, since I'm too stuck-up.
That's strictly my personal opinion based on the facts that I've gathered over the years, in direct answer to your pondering.
md: Welcome. I am glad you dropped by.
I have remarked about potential problems with organ donation, particularly the concept of "presumed consent," based on your concerns. Also, the non heartbeating cadaver protocols could slouch into that if people are not careful.
But I don't think using organs from people who die is treating them as if they were merely a collection of body parts, and I take it you don't either. It is the temptation to treat living people that way that is the threat.
Unfortunately the human propensity to give in to temptation means that killing people and using their body parts as spares is probably sooner rather than later. Especially as futile care theory takes hold.
"Soylent Green is people"
Folks can be both amazingly mean and amazingly nice.
This kind of situation-- where modern medicine simply can't rebuild her face, because of the sheer damage-- is what makes the face transplant idea feasible.
I think that the face transplant for cosmetic reasons might be a bit less likely because of the sheer amount of risk and lack of "fit" to the skull it's put on-- doesn't mean someone won't do it basically because they can, but it seems that normal plastic surgery is more effective at less risk.
There was a medic on my ship that I assume was in a car accident-- his skull was misshapen, and had some scars.
You didn't really notice the scars-- or at least I didn't-- you just got a feeling that he looked kind of...wrong. It tended to put you on edge until you figured out why-- maybe that's part of why we have such a large reaction to disfigurations?
I don't care if we call it an "evolutionary action" or "humans fallen nature"-- they're referring to the same defect that folks have.
It's also very possible that the kid simply couldn't figure out that she *was* a lady-- depending on how old the kid was, and how much he'd been protected, the very idea that a person can be hurt that badly may have never crossed his mind.
I remember seeing an eerie National Geographic photo of some Chernobyl babies with grossly distorted features and thinking, "My God, they don't look human." It's just impossible to deal with the horror of what happened to them, especially so young and full of promise.
"Nature, Mr. Alnutt, is what we were put on earth to rise above."
SAFEpres: our "innate fallenness?" Wow, that really reeks of original sin and all that stuff. Tell you what: you go on believing that we're all "innately fallen" and I'll go on believing that people are really OK, and we'll see who gets invited to more parties. How about that?
Tell you what: you go on believing that we're all "innately fallen" and I'll go on believing that people are really OK, and we'll see who gets invited to more parties. How about that?The wag in me can't resist....
How about you leave your doors unlocked and the keys in your car, since folks are really OK, and I'll go on assuming that it's best not to tempt them?
holyterrort: I think it's a cultural construct because some things that most westerners would consider downright ugly are considered "beautiful" in other cultures. For example, putting rings around a woman's neck to stretch it to a "beautiful" length, or putting discs under the lips to cause them to protrude in a "beautiful" way, or incising a person's skin in order to make "beautiful" scar tissue designs, are all common practices in some societies. Need I remind you of the old Chinese custom of binding a woman's feet to make them very, very small. Simply stated, beauty IS in the eyes of the beholder.
Scientists sometimes comment on the beauty and elegance of mathematics. Go to Wikipedia and look up "Mathematical Beauty," and you'll see this quote from Bertrand Russell:
'Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.'
From the same Wikipedia page:
'Paul Erdős expressed his views on the ineffability of mathematics when he said, "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is."'
'Mathematicians describe an especially pleasing method of proof as elegant. Depending on context, this may mean:
A proof that uses a minimum of additional assumptions or previous results.
A proof that is unusually succinct.
A proof that derives a result in a surprising way (e.g., from an apparently unrelated theorem or collection of theorems.)
A proof that is based on new and original insights.
A method of proof that can be easily generalized to solve a family of similar problems. '
This sort of beauty is universal. It's not culturally dependent, because mathematics is universal. One plus one will always equal two, whether in Chinese or Spanish. Even a dyslexic English Lit Major like myself can enjoy some of the more basic equations and be amazed and pleased by understanding how we get the answers.
Again, my personal viewpoint - we're drawn toward beauty and elegance in all things (physical objects, people, mathematics) because it's part of our desire to be close to our Creator. No matter how far we've fallen, beauty and good and truth remain, and we can grasp onto those and use them to better ourselves.
I think we don't need to look around us to know that we humans are struggling between Good and Evil; we just need to look inside ourselves at our own struggles. This is why we need to overcome our base hatred of the ugly and see the beautiful behind it. Everything was originally created to be perfect.
<< This is why we need to overcome our base hatred of the ugly and see the beautiful behind it. Everything was originally created to be perfect.
Amen. What the naturalists can't see is that extending grace to someone who is disfigured is far more beautiful than appreciating natural beauty, and you don't need to be religious to see it. I wouldn't expect all children to know it (though some most certainly will), but there is nothing more ugly than adults acting like children.
<< I don't think using organs from people who die is treating them as if they were merely a collection of body parts, and I take it you don't either. It is the temptation to treat living people that way that is the threat.
I think this is an oversimplification of the problem, and I would say that Ianthe need not defend him or herself for being squeamish about face transplants. And many people feel squeamish about being organ donors generally; is it because they are selfish? I don't think so, and I've not signed an organ donor card. There are reasons we are squeamish about this (and where are the naturalists when you really need them?) I don't have time to develop this, but Gilbert Meilaender has described the ethics of transplants and I think your take on it is too simplistic. I'm not sure if this article contains all the ideas I've read in his book chapters on transplant ethics (and don't have time to read it now) but here is one article on the topic by him.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3852
md: Come on, of course a reply to a post comment is not going to be sufficiently detailed or nuanced to cover a topic this deep.
If you are interested in my views on this area, read my columns, which are availabe in the articles archive, my posts, available through the search mode here at SHS, and my book Culture of Death, which has a full chapter on the matter.
I know Gil Meilander and we tend to see eye to eye on most issues.
Wes - I know a post on a blog is not going to be too specific or deep. When I said you were oversimplifying I took it that that might be the reason. So I meant no offense by that. But don't go self-righteous on us here; for some reason moralists (and the religious - though I am one) expect and even welcome attacks perceived from the "left", but get to the "right" of them and they have no arguments and don't take questions from that side well. And I just sent for a copy of your book so I will find out what you think soon enough.
I still think it is notable that it seemed you didn't want to allow that there might be a significant "difference between transplanting a face and transplanting corneas or a kidney." I find face transplants uniquely unsettling myself (though maybe I shouldn't), and I doubt this is an uncommon reaction.
Well maybe it is a brave new world, and maybe it is no spookier than with a transplanted heart. But part of Meilaeder's argument as I see it, if I can paraphrase him bluntly, rests on the idea that human persons are not identical with their souls (though this is a commonly-held philosophical view) and that our bodies have more to do with who we are than modern Western philosophy (and now naturalism) has led us to believe. We're all Cartesians now. Even those who don't believe we have souls still have similar beliefs about the body.
So even if we waive the issue of when a person is actually dead in the transplant debate, there is still something unsettling about how we are building humans part-by-part and what that means for human dignity even if we somehow managed not to view potential donors in terms of their parts. Given this, I suppose it is doubtful that we wouldn't view humans in terms of their parts even if the replacement organs fell out of the sky. I know that is a troublesome view but ...
md: I sure didn't mean to get self righteous.
Why is a face different from a kidney, or a cornea (if eyes are the window of the soul)? I can understand a gasp about a face transplant, but I don't think it disrespects the person who has died. Does it disrespect the person who has died to become an education cadaver in medical school? I don't think so.
The issue of death in the transplant debate, I think, is different than this matter. Your point before about doctors viewing living patients as organ systems, was valid. But I don't think that once the patient is truly dead, this is a problem.
Yet, I do think that the cadaver "art," is wrong because it uses bodies for sensationalism, nihilism, and particularly when the bodies come from China, I think there are real human rights concerns. That does disrespect human dignity, I think. But I think helping other people live or have their lives profoundly improved, as in the face transplant, respects human dignity.'
I don't use the issue of souls in my public thinking. I base my views on human exceptionalism, the unique moral worth of human beings.
Wesley: I still don't want someone else's face.
This is a body, just like an embryo is a potential body. It may be what some would consider an ex-person, but it's still another person. The parts still belong to that person. I don't believe in transplantation or donation of body parts, period. They aren't our property; they're part of us.
>> Why is a face different from a kidney, or a cornea (if eyes are the window of the soul)?
I think that is a French expression. The Latins had other expressions, including: "The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter" and "The face is the index of the mind."
But how much you want to bet that we only see the pictures of the face transplant successes? How about the failures? Transplants where death are the alternative are one thing, where you have ugliness but life on the one hand and ... well I'll leave to the imagination the failures and the consequences. It is worse than ugliness I think when you consider the depth and complexity of the work involved.
>> I can understand a gasp about a face transplant, but I don't think it disrespects the person who has died. Does it disrespect the person who has died to become an education cadaver in medical school? I don't think so.
It don't think it is different in that regard, but then you are talking to the wrong person here. I can't stand to think of my wife as cadaver and being experimented on, and other than the fact that she doesn't want to, I'm why she isn't signing a donor card. And I suspect it is why most people don't. I don't buy that it is lack of education.
>> The issue of death in the transplant debate ... was valid. But I don't think that once the patient is truly dead, this is a problem.
Dead by the cardio-pulmonary standard, or brain function?
>> ... I think helping other people live or have their lives profoundly improved, as in the face transplant, respects human dignity.'
In the best of circumstances, perhaps. In the failures, don't be surprised if the euthanasia debate returns in these cases. And then there is the constant immunosuppression to counter rejection when ugliness, not death, was the alternative.
>> I don't use the issue of souls in my public thinking. I base my views on human exceptionalism, the unique moral worth of human beings.
Fair enough. I generally do the same. But sometimes a historical (or one of classical philosophy) perspective is valuable.
HW-Oh, God, not original sin-not THAT. Oh, please God, don't let HW find out I'm a Christian-he might not invite me to his party! Oh, the horror...
If I don't get invited to HW's parties, I don't know how I'll go on living-I going to call Dr. Nitschke right now...
MD: You are the voice of reason in a lot of what you've said here, I think. That's right -- what about the other ones, where the experiment didn't "work." What about the experimentation on non-human animals that "made possible" such "wonders." How come the public isn't shown that, either. I'm not religious. I think people have become spoiled brats about what they "as humans" are entitled to, and I agree that this narcissism and "body-rebuilding" is part of the devaluation of life. But when girls were getting nose jobs at the same time the laboratories were giving us "better living through chemistry" at the expense of laboratory animals, no one said anything. No we've got plug-pulling. And still idiots are signing "organ donor cards" and "living wills" and voted for Obama.
If you checked the line up between organ donor cards, it would probably line up better with who gives blood than who voted for Obama.
Keep in mind, Obama is the one that supports the notion that an "accidentally" born baby should die, and is promoting use of ESCR.
By the way-- is blood donation icky-immoral too?
How about penicillin? Vaccines? Anti-venom, since it involves horses?
I give blood. I won't sign an organ donor card or a "living will," and I sure as hell didn't vote for Obama, who should have been impeached by now, but how could he be, there were enough idiots who voted for him to obviate that path to salvation.
By the way, penicillin is fatal to guinea pigs, we've overdone it on the vaccine thing, and if anti-venom doesn't involve treating horses like lab animals, or causing them to suffer, it's as fine by me as milk from a cow, of which I drink a couple of quarts a day. But vivisection, someone else's body part or face in or on someone else, no.
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