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How Face Transplants Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. I gotta
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Speaker 1: come up with something new, Chuck. Now you say there's
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Speaker 1: like there, it goes like I run by the Ah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: we'll figure this out. Maybe when we're not recording, we'll
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Speaker 1: just take the extra effort. That means we'll have to
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Speaker 1: speak outside of this room. Now, Yeah, we don't do that.
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Speaker 1: We're like Pete Townsend and Roger Daltery they do that,
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Speaker 1: or like the Gallagher brothers from Oasis. Yeah, they hate
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Speaker 1: each other, but when they get together it's like your gold.
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Speaker 1: You know, it's magic man. So, Chuck, have you ever
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Speaker 1: seen then John wou movie Face Off? I have not
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Speaker 1: good Chuck. You want to talk about face transplants? Yes,
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Speaker 1: you remember Travis the Chimp. It was like my first
0:54
Speaker 1: blog post ever. Ah yeah, yeah, that chimp that went
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Speaker 1: crazy and Hampshire. Yeah, well apparently he tore that woman's
1:01
Speaker 1: face off. Yeah. There There was a transcript of the
1:05
Speaker 1: of the nine eleven call and one of the cops
1:08
Speaker 1: is like, you need to send an ambulance out here.
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Speaker 1: There's a man down. He is in trouble. The guy
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Speaker 1: couldn't even tell it was a woman, like her face
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Speaker 1: was pulled off. Um and uh. One of the things,
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Speaker 1: one of the first things I heard after the detail
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Speaker 1: at Grizzly Detail emerged was that this woman would likely
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Speaker 1: get a face transplant. Right. And I'd heard of him,
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Speaker 1: but vaguely, and hadn't really put much thought into a
1:32
Speaker 1: face transplant, you know, I remember just from and we'll
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Speaker 1: talk about her later. But the French woman was the
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Speaker 1: one that came to mind. I hadn't heard about her.
1:39
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying attention, I guess. And what two thousand five,
1:42
Speaker 1: That was a rough year for you, it was, let
1:45
Speaker 1: me think, pretty hazy. Huh, Holy cow, I lost two
1:49
Speaker 1: thousand five. I'm gonna have to give some thought to
1:51
Speaker 1: this while we're practicing new intros, right, okay, so um,
1:55
Speaker 1: so yes, this this poor woman who was attacked by
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Speaker 1: this rampaging chimp, who was eventually shot to death by
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Speaker 1: the police. Um, we'll likely get a face transplant. And
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Speaker 1: we just so happened to have an article on the
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Speaker 1: site appropriately titled how face transplants work. And that's what
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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about today, right. Yeah. I love this article.
2:13
Speaker 1: By the way. It was gruesome. It was gruesome, but
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Speaker 1: it was really I don't know, Stephanie Watson wrote, it's
2:18
Speaker 1: just really well written. It is well written. I agree wellheartedly. Um,
2:21
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of pictures, um. And actually there's an
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Speaker 1: illustration like that I did too. Yeah. Um, the faces
2:29
Speaker 1: kind of draped over the skull. I like the face
2:32
Speaker 1: on ice. Yeah. Yeah, that was the best one. I think.
2:35
Speaker 1: I wonder if Marcus did that one. We'll never know.
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Speaker 1: We'll never know, no, so chuck um there. The first
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Speaker 1: successful transplant of any kind was what nineteen and there
2:46
Speaker 1: was a physician I think he was in Boston named
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Speaker 1: Joseph Murray, and he carried out the first successful kidney transplant.
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Speaker 1: And he did it using identical twins, which was the
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Speaker 1: key early on, like people had tried transplanting things before.
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Speaker 1: But you know, in the transplant went well, but ultimately
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Speaker 1: the body rejected it. You know why, Uh, I want
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Speaker 1: to hear your explanation, pal, Well, it's because the body
3:10
Speaker 1: isn't very receptive to foreign tissue. So when you get
3:14
Speaker 1: we're back in those days when you would get something transplanted.
3:17
Speaker 1: Your body sees that as a foreign invader, just like
3:19
Speaker 1: it would a disease or something, and the white blood
3:22
Speaker 1: cells kick into gear and just go into attack mode.
3:25
Speaker 1: The body no likely foreign invaders now, But if you're
3:28
Speaker 1: identical twins, um, you had enough of a match to
3:30
Speaker 1: where it worked out. Right. The problem is that most
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Speaker 1: people who need transplants don't have identical twins, so it's
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Speaker 1: a it's a terrible way to you know, establish medical procedure,
3:39
Speaker 1: but it was a good way to starting well sure,
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Speaker 1: and it was successful. He showed that you can transplant
3:44
Speaker 1: human tissue from one person to another and it be successful.
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Speaker 1: So that was like the real milestone. Uh. And then
3:53
Speaker 1: after that, you know, people started exploring other ways to
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Speaker 1: do this without uh, you know, um, identical twins. You
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Speaker 1: know how I want to hear your explanation. Well, you're
4:03
Speaker 1: really piping up today, aren't Uh. By the nineteen sixties,
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Speaker 1: what they figured out is that they could suppress your
4:09
Speaker 1: immune system. Then you could using drugs like a cyclosporine,
4:14
Speaker 1: you could you could be successful with the transplant. And
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Speaker 1: what they're trying to suppress their things called and egens,
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Speaker 1: which are proteins. They're found on the exterior of uh
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Speaker 1: tissue tissue cells, right yeah, um, and and those are
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Speaker 1: the things that create that prompt an immune response. So
4:32
Speaker 1: they're the ones that sense like, well, whoa, whoa, I
4:34
Speaker 1: don't remember this hand being here before we lost our hand.
4:37
Speaker 1: What's going on here? Go get rid of that hand, right,
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Speaker 1: And then the white blood cells attack like the cavalry,
4:43
Speaker 1: which is awesome. I mean, it's great. It's cool that
4:45
Speaker 1: your body does this because that means you have a
4:47
Speaker 1: robust and violent immune system. Of course, if you're trying
4:52
Speaker 1: to get a transplant, it's no good. But you want
4:54
Speaker 1: your body to go after things with bigger like yeah,
4:56
Speaker 1: like mersa, you don't want that, no, no, but yeah,
5:00
Speaker 1: if you have a hand, you you you wish you
5:02
Speaker 1: could tell your your antigens to just settle down. It's
5:05
Speaker 1: your new hand and you're pretty fond of it to
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Speaker 1: keep it right. So, so the problem is the the
5:11
Speaker 1: drugs that they came up with were immune suppressive, meaning
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Speaker 1: okay that the antigens are no longer being prompted to
5:19
Speaker 1: attack the hand or send the white bloods also attack
5:22
Speaker 1: the hand, but they're also not being prompted to go
5:24
Speaker 1: attack the mersa bacteria that's in your body. Now, Um,
5:29
Speaker 1: you left you susceptible to other problems that pretty much
5:32
Speaker 1: everything else. I mean, how many uh, bacteria and viruses
5:36
Speaker 1: just germs in general do we come in contact with
5:38
Speaker 1: any every day and we don't even notice? Like we
5:42
Speaker 1: did that one on toads causing wards and like twenty
5:45
Speaker 1: million people have the human pablova virus and um, you know,
5:51
Speaker 1: very few are actually suffering from it. We don't even
5:54
Speaker 1: know where carriers because their bodies can ward it off, right,
5:57
Speaker 1: So we had to come up with something better, and
5:59
Speaker 1: they did, but it was along the lines of immunosuppressive drugs.
6:04
Speaker 1: We just got the most slightly more refined, right Exactly.
6:07
Speaker 1: Once we had that down, we started really going crazy
6:09
Speaker 1: with heart transplants transplants. Eighties and nineties is when they
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Speaker 1: really kind of started mastering this whole technique, right, And
6:16
Speaker 1: then after that, after the vital organ transplants, we started
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Speaker 1: getting into those hand transplants. I gotta tell you, I
6:22
Speaker 1: find that fascinating. Very Look, Skywalker, S know you're gonna
6:26
Speaker 1: say that, thank you. You know me so well, well,
6:28
Speaker 1: the way you're doing your hand, it was like the
6:29
Speaker 1: scene from the movie. Yeah, it looks like it. Oh yeah,
6:33
Speaker 1: they can't see okay. Um. So, so inevitably we end
6:38
Speaker 1: up at facial transplants and it took a little while,
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Speaker 1: but really, if you think about it, we went from
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Speaker 1: the first successful kidney transplant to the first successful face
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Speaker 1: transplant about fifty years. Not bad. That's pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah,
6:51
Speaker 1: So so let's talk about you want to talk about
6:53
Speaker 1: that poor girl in uh sound deep coo are or Josh.
7:00
Speaker 1: She was nine years old in northern Indian. She was
7:02
Speaker 1: chopping grass to feed her buffalo, her family buffalo, which
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Speaker 1: is a noble pursuit very much, and her hair got
7:09
Speaker 1: caught in the threshing machine and basically pulled her entire
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Speaker 1: face and scalp and hair right off of her, clean
7:16
Speaker 1: off of her. Yeah, and and her family reacted promptly.
7:20
Speaker 1: They threw her face into a bag, put the girl
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Speaker 1: on the back of a moped and drove to the
7:26
Speaker 1: closest hospital, which was three hours away. So they drove
7:29
Speaker 1: their faceless, scalpless, hairless daughter to the hospital on a
7:34
Speaker 1: moped for three hours, and the doctors took a look
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Speaker 1: at her and we're like, we can't do skin grass.
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Speaker 1: This girl is never going to function properly again. So
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Speaker 1: they actually put her face, scalp and hair back on
7:45
Speaker 1: and she she's functioning. Yeah. Actually, just I saw a
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Speaker 1: picture of her at nineteen on the internet. She looks good,
7:52
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, there's some scars, obviously, and I
7:55
Speaker 1: think her right eye has a little bit of a
7:57
Speaker 1: droop to it, so, I mean you can tell, but
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Speaker 1: you know, if your face has been pulled clean off
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Speaker 1: by a treasure, you really can't complain about the little droopy.
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Speaker 1: I so that that was technically the first facial transplant,
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Speaker 1: but the first real transplant from a donor came in
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Speaker 1: two thousand five. Can I handle the grizzly details on
8:18
Speaker 1: this one please. There's something that I noticed in researching
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Speaker 1: how face transplants work, and that is that all face
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Speaker 1: transplants begin with a horrible, gruesome event. Yeah, there's really
8:28
Speaker 1: no way to lose your face unless there's some horrible accident.
8:32
Speaker 1: And even if there's like a disease, it's a ravaging,
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Speaker 1: horrible disease to like tumors or something, or the well,
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Speaker 1: the elephant man disease. I think it is what they
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Speaker 1: call it. Yes, he was not an animal, no um.
8:44
Speaker 1: So this woman was named Isabelle Dean Noir and uh,
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Speaker 1: she's a frenchwoman. And in two thousand five, she popped
8:52
Speaker 1: some sleeping pills, passed out on her couch and she
8:56
Speaker 1: woke up. I don't know if this is a normal
8:58
Speaker 1: habit of hers or not, but she woke up, and uh,
9:01
Speaker 1: I went to go light a cigarette and found that
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Speaker 1: it kept falling out of her mouth. She didn't know
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Speaker 1: what was going on. So she goes to the mirror
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Speaker 1: and the lower half of her face I took from
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Speaker 1: below her nose down was gone. She was nothing but
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Speaker 1: like tissue and teeth. And apparently, from what I understand,
9:18
Speaker 1: and I know you know something different, I'd like to
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Speaker 1: hear it. From what I understand, her black lab chewed
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Speaker 1: the bottom of her face off while she was sleeping. True.
9:27
Speaker 1: Is that true? It is true, But there's and I
9:30
Speaker 1: couldn't get a straight answer. I read a bunch of
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Speaker 1: articles and follow up articles on this today and I
9:35
Speaker 1: still didn't get what I think is the absolute truth
9:39
Speaker 1: of what happened. Some people um claimed she was committing suicide,
9:43
Speaker 1: and then the doctors denied it, but then one doctor
9:45
Speaker 1: said that she had tried to commit suicide. And um,
9:49
Speaker 1: then the the whole dog situation. You know, black labs,
9:53
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a dog guy. They aren't to believe
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Speaker 1: that a lab would do that, right, So what they
9:58
Speaker 1: think might have happened was she was out and the
10:01
Speaker 1: dog was concerned because they thought she was dead, and
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Speaker 1: was pawing at her face and became really agitated and
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Speaker 1: upset and pawed and scratched to the point where you know,
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Speaker 1: there was blood probably, and then started chewing up like
10:16
Speaker 1: trying to evidently trying to wake her up. But there's
10:18
Speaker 1: speculation about that too. But they but they think the
10:21
Speaker 1: dog did do it for some reason or another. They
10:24
Speaker 1: think the dog did it for a reason, trying to
10:26
Speaker 1: arouse her from her slumber. Um, because I think I
10:30
Speaker 1: read someone else said that you'd have to be so
10:33
Speaker 1: far out of it to not wake up with that
10:35
Speaker 1: kind of pain sensation that it had to have been
10:38
Speaker 1: a suicide attempt. So I thought it was a little
10:41
Speaker 1: odd that she took pills and fell asleep on the couch, right,
10:43
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, And then she came out later and
10:45
Speaker 1: said that she hit her head and was knocked out,
10:47
Speaker 1: so I'm not exactly sure what happened. All I know
10:50
Speaker 1: is the dog was put to sleep, which really is
10:51
Speaker 1: upsetting to me. That is upsetting, especially if it was
10:54
Speaker 1: trying to rescue her. I mean, the whole thing is upsetting.
10:57
Speaker 1: Regardless of what happened. Isabel Dean Noir got a face transplant.
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Speaker 1: She did. Indeed, h this is the first major news
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Speaker 1: uh worthy face transplant, which I still didn't hear about.
11:11
Speaker 1: That was a rough here for you. Um so uh.
11:15
Speaker 1: Apparently they could have taken tissue from her chest to
11:18
Speaker 1: repair the damage, but she wouldn't have had very much movement, right,
11:22
Speaker 1: It would have just looked like a face, but not
11:25
Speaker 1: really exactly a fake eye or something. Right. But they
11:27
Speaker 1: what they want is feeling and function going on. They
11:31
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to smell and feel and have
11:33
Speaker 1: all the senses reacting, and that's the ideal. Most surgeons
11:36
Speaker 1: are perfectionists. Yeah, So, so what they did was they
11:39
Speaker 1: found a donor. Here's what we're getting to, the ethical aspects.
11:44
Speaker 1: Can we jump ahead and move around a little bit please? Okay,
11:48
Speaker 1: there's the only person who can be a face donor
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Speaker 1: is one who has to be on life support on
11:57
Speaker 1: life support, Well, someone has to be alive, right, but
12:00
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't give up your face? Sure, no, no
12:02
Speaker 1: one's that. I just want to get specific. It has
12:05
Speaker 1: it has to come from a live donor, and the
12:07
Speaker 1: only scenario where that could happen is if you're brain
12:09
Speaker 1: dead on life support and then the family has to
12:11
Speaker 1: agree to pull the plug essentially, right, And remember we
12:14
Speaker 1: did the how comas work and we were we were
12:17
Speaker 1: positing whether or not people feel pain in deep vegetative states,
12:22
Speaker 1: and you gotta hope not when they're taking your face,
12:25
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what they do. They go to the donor,
12:28
Speaker 1: they moved the donor into the operating theater, they take
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Speaker 1: the face off. I imagined they cut around the scalp
12:35
Speaker 1: and then down behind the ears, maybe in front of
12:37
Speaker 1: the ears, whatever, below the chin, and that would be
12:41
Speaker 1: a full face transplant, as our illustration shows, they put
12:45
Speaker 1: it on ice. Well, this was a partial face transplant, okay,
12:47
Speaker 1: so it would have been like the lower part of
12:49
Speaker 1: the face. But whatever part of the face you need,
12:51
Speaker 1: whether it's full or partial, it would be cut off removed,
12:55
Speaker 1: depending on whether or not any of the connective tissue
12:57
Speaker 1: was needed. Still any bone, any fat muscles, all of
13:02
Speaker 1: that stuff may be taken as well, and then it's
13:06
Speaker 1: again put on ice or whatever, transported to wherever the
13:09
Speaker 1: recipient is. And then all of these things are reattached.
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Speaker 1: Blood vessels are reattached, a connective tissue, all this stuff. Um,
13:18
Speaker 1: and you have to do it in such a way. Well.
13:20
Speaker 1: Number one, skin tones kind of a big, a big consideration.
13:23
Speaker 1: To find a match. Um, you want to find somebody,
13:25
Speaker 1: you have to do h l a testing or matching,
13:28
Speaker 1: which is that antigen testing to make sure that that
13:30
Speaker 1: you have a similar enough immune system that there won't
13:33
Speaker 1: be a rejection. Um, you may have to put bone down,
13:36
Speaker 1: as was the case with a Chinese guy in what
13:39
Speaker 1: two thousand six and uh, he was malled by a bear? Right,
13:45
Speaker 1: what what is going on? Right? He was malled by
13:47
Speaker 1: a bear. And this was a unique case different from
13:50
Speaker 1: the French woman because he was missing skin and part
13:54
Speaker 1: of the bone in his nose and cheeks. He was
13:57
Speaker 1: a huge challenge. Hers was just skin in and his
14:01
Speaker 1: required quite a bit more. And we're talking like teams
14:06
Speaker 1: of fifteen to twenty doctors over the course of fifteen
14:08
Speaker 1: to twenty hours. Well with Madame de Noir. She had
14:12
Speaker 1: a team of fifty doctors. They started at ten thirty
14:16
Speaker 1: at night and they finished at four the next day,
14:18
Speaker 1: four after four in the afternoon, went straight through the
14:21
Speaker 1: irony is as if she did try to commit suicide.
14:24
Speaker 1: Her face was donated by a woman who failed in
14:26
Speaker 1: a suicide attach. Yeah, how about that. Yeah it's a
14:29
Speaker 1: little odd, but yeah, okay. So they they also practice
14:34
Speaker 1: the people of rats, cadavers, rabbits. There's a picture of
14:39
Speaker 1: I guess one of their test subjects, a rabbit with
14:42
Speaker 1: a face transplant on page zero, the first page of
14:45
Speaker 1: this article, and it's just cute as a button. But
14:49
Speaker 1: it's also furry. We don't have the luxury of fur
14:52
Speaker 1: as humans, so they kind of have to do a
14:55
Speaker 1: relatively good job reconstructing a face, and it usually takes
14:59
Speaker 1: more than once. They'll be several phases of surgery. Yeah,
15:02
Speaker 1: it shows, uh, And I've seen pictures of the frenchwoman
15:05
Speaker 1: over the course of different surgeries, getting better and better. Um.
15:08
Speaker 1: What I thought was interesting was that once you have
15:11
Speaker 1: the surgery, you need to be on these immuno suppressant
15:14
Speaker 1: drugs for the rest of your life. So it's it's
15:17
Speaker 1: good that you're able to live through this and get
15:19
Speaker 1: a new face. But these drugs also put a serious
15:21
Speaker 1: DNT and your ability to survive and live a long
15:24
Speaker 1: life right, And apparently Madame de Noir is not really
15:28
Speaker 1: helping things along. She refuses to quit smoking, and I
15:31
Speaker 1: thought you might respect that, and the doctors are like,
15:34
Speaker 1: come on, she smoked pretty soon afterward too. Yeah. Well,
15:37
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a smoker, you're a smoker, dude,
15:39
Speaker 1: face transplant or no, I guess. So. Yeah, my first
15:41
Speaker 1: father in law got like shunts put in. He was
15:44
Speaker 1: smoking and golfing like a couple of days later. Really,
15:47
Speaker 1: he just wouldn't stop heart shunts. I should say, okay,
15:51
Speaker 1: cardiac shunts. Um. Now, Josh, these are all partial transplants,
15:55
Speaker 1: even in the case of the one from China, and
15:57
Speaker 1: as of the writing of this article, we actually need
15:59
Speaker 1: to update this article. There were no full transplants, but
16:02
Speaker 1: there have been since then. Chuck, I have to say
16:04
Speaker 1: you were killing it today the external research. You corrected
16:08
Speaker 1: me at least once, if not twice. I am proud
16:11
Speaker 1: of Chuckers compass head hearts Chuckers um. So yes, Josh,
16:16
Speaker 1: I'm ignoring your praise there have been two transplants that
16:19
Speaker 1: I know of. There may be more, but I've noted
16:22
Speaker 1: a couple that have happened that are full facial transplants.
16:25
Speaker 1: One of them was a woman in Chicago who they
16:27
Speaker 1: haven't named, keeping that quiet, who the doctor basically said
16:31
Speaker 1: she didn't have a nose, she didn't have a midface
16:34
Speaker 1: at all. And they were able to transplant Josh almost
16:38
Speaker 1: eighty three square inches of skin with muscle bone, upper lip,
16:43
Speaker 1: and nose from the donor still attached. Isn't that amazing?
16:48
Speaker 1: And Uh, the Cleveland clinic is where all this is
16:51
Speaker 1: going on. Man, if you need a face transplant, you
16:52
Speaker 1: want to be in Cleveland. Uh. And then there was
16:55
Speaker 1: a man, a Frenchman who had the elephant man disease. Yeah,
16:59
Speaker 1: I see you have a sure there, kenseee wow played
17:04
Speaker 1: a difference yea. And this was just um March of
17:07
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. He had a transplant and new lips,
17:12
Speaker 1: new cheeks, new nose, new mouth. We should we should
17:15
Speaker 1: publish this that that before and after photo and a blog.
17:17
Speaker 1: After the blog, this podcast comes out. What do you think? Yeah,
17:20
Speaker 1: let me look and see if we can get right. Yeah,
17:23
Speaker 1: I think we can. But yeah, though, so apparently they
17:26
Speaker 1: can do full facial transplants now, it's it's an amazing
17:30
Speaker 1: and amazing thing. Well, that brings up another ethical concern besides,
17:33
Speaker 1: you know, taking the face of somebody who's not dead
17:35
Speaker 1: but his brain dead. Um. The other ethical concerned that
17:40
Speaker 1: that some parts of the medical community worry about is
17:44
Speaker 1: what happens when the wealthy are like, you know, I
17:47
Speaker 1: don't want collagen or botox. I'm just gonna get a
17:50
Speaker 1: facial transplant from a poor, brain dead person. You know,
17:53
Speaker 1: I'll pay the family like dollars and take the face.
17:58
Speaker 1: I saw that in the article and don't buy it
18:00
Speaker 1: because right now, like, they do a good job with
18:04
Speaker 1: these transplants, but the end results certainly doesn't. You know.
18:09
Speaker 1: If you're like, if your aim is to be extremely
18:11
Speaker 1: handsome or beautiful, that's not what you're gonna get right
18:14
Speaker 1: now with a face right now. Sure, but again, Chuck,
18:16
Speaker 1: we went from the first kidney transplant to face transplants
18:19
Speaker 1: in fifty years. Where are we going to be fifty
18:21
Speaker 1: years from now? And I mean, really, is there anything
18:24
Speaker 1: stopping vanity? No, there's not. And it's especially especially if
18:29
Speaker 1: we harness um genetics so that we can age right,
18:33
Speaker 1: we can we we we harness longevity, um, but we
18:37
Speaker 1: still kind of age poorly. You don't think that people
18:39
Speaker 1: are going to pay for a face transplant by e
18:41
Speaker 1: D if we're living to like one twenty on average.
18:43
Speaker 1: What I think will happen by in fifty years is
18:46
Speaker 1: there will be other ways to make yourself beautiful. Like
18:49
Speaker 1: you said, to stop the aging process, there will be
18:51
Speaker 1: other ways besides uh, finding a beautiful brain dead person
18:55
Speaker 1: to take their face. I think that's just that's just me.
18:58
Speaker 1: We'll see, of course, you know, learning I'll be long gone.
19:01
Speaker 1: Both of us will check. Yeah, I think I'm going
19:04
Speaker 1: first too. Don't make your face no, And actually, let
19:07
Speaker 1: me also say this. This is such a tangential aside.
19:11
Speaker 1: Did you know that if you are an organ donor,
19:14
Speaker 1: you should and you have a problem with your head
19:17
Speaker 1: being used for cosmetic surgery practice, you have to specify
19:21
Speaker 1: I do not want my head use for cosmetic surgery practice. Yeah,
19:25
Speaker 1: because they if you go into a med school that
19:29
Speaker 1: focuses on cosmetic surgery heads and they practice on you
19:33
Speaker 1: doing faceless and stuff. Interesting. Yeah, so organ donor, and
19:38
Speaker 1: actually I need to make that little caveat there, like,
19:40
Speaker 1: do not use my face, it's too pretty. I wonder
19:44
Speaker 1: if I noted that you can use my face, but
19:46
Speaker 1: let me wear my flat cap. That would be cool. Yeah,
19:49
Speaker 1: it would like your tongue hanging out in one eye
19:51
Speaker 1: open still but your flat caps on cool to the end. Nice. So,
19:55
Speaker 1: of course, the best thing you could do is learned
19:56
Speaker 1: to be pretty on the inside, and then you wouldn't
19:58
Speaker 1: have to worry about anything unless you're all. Buy a bear,
20:00
Speaker 1: your black live, choose the bottom of your face off.
20:02
Speaker 1: Then you get a pass for the face transplant thing.
20:05
Speaker 1: You want to learn more about that. It's a really
20:07
Speaker 1: cool article. You can type how face transplants work into
20:10
Speaker 1: the handy search bar and how stuff works dot com?
20:13
Speaker 1: And are we still doing plug fest? Alright? Our producer
20:18
Speaker 1: Jerry says yes, So let's do it, Chuck. Let's start
20:21
Speaker 1: with the blog abbreviated version. Yes, blog good, blog fun
20:27
Speaker 1: Josh Chuck Right, blog fans read blog fire bad? All right?
20:32
Speaker 1: Moving on, Okay, the stuff you should know super Stuff
20:35
Speaker 1: Guide to the Economy that's on iTunes, worth the money
20:41
Speaker 1: getting good feedback. Type in super stuffed on the search
20:45
Speaker 1: bar on iTunes and you can get it all right,
20:49
Speaker 1: plug fest is over, Okay, so then it's time for
20:51
Speaker 1: reader mail. And uh, I see that that podcast finally
20:56
Speaker 1: came out where we said hi Ku is dead once
20:59
Speaker 1: and for all. Yeah, yeah, that was great. It's interesting
21:02
Speaker 1: we still have some people writing in that are upset
21:05
Speaker 1: about the lack of hikus, and then um many others
21:07
Speaker 1: writing in saying thank you because I was tired of
21:10
Speaker 1: it as well. Well. In case anyone didn't get the memo,
21:12
Speaker 1: let's play that little clip from that that listener mail
21:15
Speaker 1: where we do say that hi Ku theaters dead. Here
21:17
Speaker 1: it is right, Josh. This is significant because today is
21:22
Speaker 1: the day where we retire Haiku Theater. Thank you. Did
21:27
Speaker 1: everyone here that we are retiring Hiku Theater. We love
21:29
Speaker 1: your high Kus and you can still send him if
21:31
Speaker 1: you want, but we're not going to read him anymore. Agreed.
21:33
Speaker 1: Thank you, Chuck, Thank you, Thank you Chuck. So as
21:39
Speaker 1: you can see, I'm not lying, Hiku Theater is clearly dead.
21:42
Speaker 1: I don't see any reason for anybody sending Hiku. But
21:45
Speaker 1: what is not dead, Josh, are mistakes that we occasionally
21:48
Speaker 1: make that will never will never die. And we got
21:51
Speaker 1: a correction, um from one we just did on the
21:53
Speaker 1: World ending in twelve and this is a good one,
21:56
Speaker 1: and I'd like to read the good ones. Yeah, the
21:57
Speaker 1: good science one. Um. I just wanted to make a
22:01
Speaker 1: small correction. You mentioned that the lava flows can be
22:04
Speaker 1: used to determine the direction of magnetic north in the past,
22:07
Speaker 1: which is true, but it is not because the lava
22:10
Speaker 1: actually flows toward the pole. So evidently, Josh, there are
22:13
Speaker 1: magnetic properties of some of the individual mineral grains. And
22:17
Speaker 1: I know someone mentioned iron in one of their emails
22:19
Speaker 1: inside the molten lava, and that becomes a line with
22:22
Speaker 1: the direction of the pole. So when the lava cools
22:24
Speaker 1: and hardens, that direction is locked in. So the lava
22:28
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be flowing north, but the iron
22:30
Speaker 1: particles and other minerals in there are pointed north. And
22:34
Speaker 1: evidently you said the lava flows north, then that's not true, buddy.
22:38
Speaker 1: So samples of the lava, if collected with care to
22:41
Speaker 1: note the original orientation, can then be brought into the
22:44
Speaker 1: lab and GEO referenced. And we get a big cheers
22:48
Speaker 1: from Jessica for that one. And also Peter wrote in
22:52
Speaker 1: about that, and John the Yellow Dart, thank you. John
22:56
Speaker 1: the Yellow Darts and we're not allowed to say last
22:57
Speaker 1: things anymore. That's why. If you're wondering gonna get in
23:00
Speaker 1: trouble for the Yellow Dart, then no, that was it
23:02
Speaker 1: was actually John the Yellow Dart blank. Oh got you? Okay,
23:06
Speaker 1: well thanks, can we say blank? Then sure, John the
23:10
Speaker 1: Yellow Dark blank. So his last name is not blank?
23:12
Speaker 1: We know for a fact. Okay, because wouldn't that be ironic?
23:15
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks to all of you wrote in
23:17
Speaker 1: to correct me. You know how much I love that.
23:19
Speaker 1: And if you want to send a correction in or
23:21
Speaker 1: tell Chuck that his hair is beyond awesome, you can
23:24
Speaker 1: do that by sending an email to Stuff Podcast at
23:28
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
23:35
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
23:37
Speaker 1: com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
23:43
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you