Face transplant refers to a medical procedure whereby face tissue from a donor, or the patient’s own skin from their back, buttocks or thighs, are grafted onto the patient’s face in order to replace the part of or whole of the original face. Currently, face transplant is mostly used to help patients who were facially disfigured in accidents. There have been numerous applications of face transplant around the world, such as:


• Richard Lee Norris who suffered a gunshot wound that left him with extensive facial trauma and decided to undergo the longest and most extensive facial transplant in 2012
• 19 year old Ugur Acar who was badly burnt in a house fire when he was a baby underwent a full face transplant in Antalya in 2012
• Dallas Wiens, who was bably disfigured in a power line accident that ledt him blind and without lips, nose or eyebrows, underwent a full face transplant in 2011 

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While face transplant is generally used for such reconstructive purposes right now, it is not far-fetched to envisage that in the near future, face transplant might be used for aesthetic purposes. Such a change in the application of technology in the future in the field of aesthetic surgery might escalate aspects of the debate regarding moral ethics that already plague cosmetic surgery for aesthetic purposes, such as a loss of identity, the psychological implications, and the ethical dilemna of tampering with nature.

Furthermore, face transplant is a technology that may easily be abused, such as the emergence of a black market for criminals on the run. While one may argue that plastic surgery has been around for hundreds of years, and has always been used by criminals to escape notice by the authorities i.e. a new face would not be a novel way to avoid detection, it is undeniable that a full face transplant is definitely more drastic and radical. Thus, there is a need to carefully regulate the use of face transplant.

One may also neeed to consider that with the advancement in adult stem-cell resesrach, this might be a short-lived technology in the greater scheme of things.