“Face transplants expose deep held prejudices
about identity and wellbeing. Are these ideas ripe for a radical rethink?”
By: Sharrona Pearl
Level of difficulty: ***
BEFORE YOU READ
·
Man with a transplanted face is
living a normal life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsltTrfxj-s
·
Face transplant patient goes public https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORFnKkAi6k
·
Face transplant recipient – “My
brother’s keeper” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm2f0-LTmxs
QUESTIONS
1. What would have been the logical
second step after the successful hand transplant?
2. The above implies that: mark as many
as apply
·
Doctors
felt confident they could perform the surgery
·
Doctors
had the expertise to perform the surgery
·
Doctors
had the know-how to perform the surgery
·
Doctors
felt ready to perform the surgery
3. What was the reason for the public
outcry following the face transplant?
4. Which phrase best summarizes the
paragraph beginning “Public outcry…”?
5. Dinoire was not considered the best
candidate by the public because they felt she was:
·
Undeserving
·
Disturbed
·
Frightened
·
Unethical
6. The public outcry following
Dinoire’s surgery necessitated ……………..before Connie Culp’s surgery could take
place.
7. Read the two paragraphs beginning
“Except not exactly” and “To be absolutely clear…”Where would you place the
following:
·
In
fact, it transpired that it wasn’t
·
And
as such, caused them to die of cancer
8. A grammar question: replace “But
even this is tricky…” with a full sentence with no pronouns.
9. What conclusion can be drawn from
the paragraph beginning “They led better lives…”?
10. The cases of Culp and Sandness both
prove that for the recipients of new faces…………….is vital for their future.
11. We understand from James Maki’s
story that one major fear concerning face transplants is that…
12. It is stated in the text that face
transplants could transform the way we think about the face and what lies
beneath. How could face transplants succeed in doing this?
13. Face transplants can never replace
traditional plastic surgery because…
14. The purpose of makeovers seems to be
to try and correct…..However, the increased emphasis on makeovers also means
that people are over concerned about …..
15. Cosmetic surgery differs from face
transplants in that in the latter…
16. The writer criticizes public
attitudes to face transplants because society seems reluctant to…
17. We understand from the case of
Dinoire that ……………….was not the real issue. It was the fear that………….
18. What does “this fate” in the phrase
“To avoid this fate,…” refer to?
19. The writer’s major criticism of
society is that…
WRITING TASK
Use all you
have read and watched to write an essay discussing the personal and public
implications of face transplants.
CHANGING FACES; KEY AND TEACHERS’S NOTES
This text covers the perceived relationship
between the face and identity through the medium of face transplants. As such,
it is a very original way of exploring the issue. I personally found it
riveting but a word of warning: there is a lot of philosophy along with actual
cases of face transplants.
1. Performing a face transplant
2. All four
3. The manipulation of something held
to be fundamental to individual identity / OR: Manipulating the face not just
by changing it but by using the face of another person entirely
4. The objections to the surgery were
rooted in feelings not facts (It would be wrong to include the rest because it
is a flash forward)
5. Disturbed (meaning she had
psychological problems or mental issues)
6. Careful advanced PR, articles in
both surgical and bioethical literature
7. The first one goes at the end of the
first paragraph you read and the second goes after “made relatively healthy
people sick”.
8. Considering potential recipients who
haven’t had the surgery well is tricky
9. The face transplant becomes a way to
make people better by making them more palatable in public.
10. The ability to lead a public life
free from being labeled monstrous
11. Face transplant recipients wouldn’t
be individuals, would not have a sense of identity, would not be their own
unique people
12. They have the potential to lay bare
the way in which a person’s facial features, skin color and disfigurement lie
on the surface and don’t have to be directly correlated to the person’s depth.
13. It is impractical for recipients to choose
their faces given the expense, the scarcity of donors, the anti-rejection
regimes and of course final outcome.
14. The mismatch between people’s
current appearance and who they are inside / Appearance
15. How the donor looks is simply not
part of the equation (This is enough)
16. New ways of conceiving of identity
as being rooted in something other than facial features and how they appear
17. Her personal story / messing with
faces means messing with minds
18. Facelessness
19. It doesn’t have a more generous
sense of acceptable appearance
