Wearing the Face of a Stranger

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:00:00 PDT

It's hard to imagine living with a severe facial deformity, but what about living your life with someone else's face? Until recently, victims of severe facial trauma or burns have had little recourse beyond often ineffective skin grafts. But this week, doctors have declared two face transplants long-term successes. Caution: The photo after the jump shows a facial wound.

Performing a face transplant is a difficult procedure that involves many disciplines. Underlying facial structures can be very complex, so doctors must configure sinuses, reattach blood vessels and nerves, and try to make the result aesthetically pleasing. There are rejection and other immune system issues, similar to other transplant surgeries. On top of all that, there are psychological factors to consider. The patient is literally wearing another person's face. Even when that face replaces one severely disfigured by an injury or a tumor, it can be difficult to adjust.

The two successful transplants took place in 2006 and early 2007, according to British medical journal The Lancet. Doctors waited to judge the success of the surgeries so they would know if the transplants were rejected or if other problems developed. The patients, one a victim of a bear attack and the other a patient with severe facial tumors, report tremendous improvements in their quality of life. You can see a before and after photo of the man who was mauled by a bear above. An entire section of his face was replaced, including bone.

So how far away are we from Nicolas Cage and John Travolta swapping identities the way they did in Face/Off? Probably 100 years. But as this medical technology improves, a whole slew of freaky sci-fi scenarios become possible. Witness relocation? The ultimate secret agent? A black market auction for the face of a dead movie star? Or, like me, we'll all just have that old Payolas song stuck in our heads. Images by: The Lancet via BBC.

Face transplant 'double success'. [BBC News]

Alternate History White Ghetto in "White Man's Burden"

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:49:46 PDT

An uneven but evocative standout in the small subgenre of science fiction movies about race is the alternate history White Man's Burden, directed by Desmond Nakano and hitting screens in 1995 with high-wattage stars Harry Belafonte and John Travolta. Set in a contemporary America where blacks are the ruling class and whites live in ghettos, the movie begins with two fascinating scenes: magnate Belafonte tells a high-society dinner party that whites are inferior, then we cut to our working-class white protagonist Travolta driving through the white ghetto. Notice that there's a quick shot of two black cops arresting a white guy, and when we see Travolta's son channel-surfing, nearly every face on TV is black. Also, I love that the white gangsters are listening to bad metal. The movie sank without a trace, partly because Nakano neglected to engage meaningfully with the social world he's created, instead quickly turning the movie into a standard hostage flick with angry, out-of-work Travolta kidnapping Belafonte and everybody yelling and sweating a lot.

White Man's Burden on Rotten Tomatoes.

io9: john travolta

Wearing the Face of a Stranger

Alternate History White Ghetto in "White Man's Burden"