[extropy-chat] Face Transplants

[Olga Bourlin]

From: Natasha Vita-More 
  >>At 03:05 PM 2/15/04 -0800, Olga wrote:
  >>"Society may not be quite ready for the day when a dead person's face is
  recycled for the living - but that day is coming...

  >>... Faces are the most visible portion of human identities. They're how we
  think of ourselves, how others recognize us. The possibility of altering
  that identity so radically - a science-fiction plot device made real - could
  make people recoil, perhaps eroding support for the operation.":

  >I was not able to read the article, but engineering faces is fascinating.  We will have to rethink and relearn how we "read" people's faces.  It is fairly easy to recognize a face that has had reconstruction or does have removable parts.  We would need the capability detect the seamless replaced faces, and another capability to go into the brain and see the lines of experience within the brain that had once been worn on the bio face.
  Presently, recycling (dead people's) faces would be a stop-gap measure.  Better scientific solutions will undoubtedly come along.  

  What's interesting to me about this is that it's one more medical/engineering innovation that will exemply to the general public the practicality of science and technology over trying to bribe their deity-of-choice.  Also, it may inspire another facet in the debate about who we are vs. how we look (or whom we look like?).

  Olga


  baby step for the general public to grapple with the questions of who we are and what we are and how to keep ourselves as intact as possible in a practical way.     
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