If it's not a matter of life or death, it's not necessary?

The subject of face transplants has been more in my awareness lately after watching this documentary about it. It highlighted three people, two of whom had undergone partial face transplants. A third was in line and hopeful to receive one. Now, CNN has reported about the first facial transplant to take place in America. The article is here.

I feel saddened by the attitude of the director of the Institute of Catholic Bioethics:

Critics such as Peter A. Clark, director of the Institute of Catholic Bioethics at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said a facial transplant introduces unnecessary risks for a procedure that is not a matter of life and death.

"With something like a liver or kidney transplant, it's a life or death transplant," Clark said. "Even with a kidney or liver [transplant], you have to be put on immunosuppressants with serious side effects."

The article goes on to report that:

Bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania's Medical Ethics Department, said Wednesday on CNN's "American Morning" that he initially had similar qualms about the facial transplant, which improves the quality of a life rather than saving it, but was gradually convinced.

People with major facial disfigurements "don't come out and basically stay at home and have a huge suicide rate," Caplan said. "They're really up against it."

At the news conference Wednesday, Kodish said the transplant had "abundant moral justification": the face as a personal embodiment as self.

He added that people with disfigurements are often isolated and suffer tremendously and that this case was "not cosmetic surgery in any sense."

It is sad to me that we might take our perfectly acceptable faces for granted, having never possibly dealt with people looking at us in genuine horror purely because of our appearance. After watching the documentary I had stumbled upon, I felt a newfound awareness of the issues involved with severe facial deformities. Be it through birth defects or serious accidents (often involving fire), it seems obvious to me that isolation, depression, and estrangement from society would certainly qualify as a strong case in favor of facial transplants. If a child is born with a cleft palate, for example, should we not bother dealing with it at all? Usually, it's not life threatening so why bother?

Please consider learning more about this issue and even donating to a cause like this one.