Luddite [UN]Ethics doing its dirty work again

I'm really getting sick and tired of the luddism at work today that is holding back our progress and would if allowed do much more than merely hold it back. I am especially sick of the driving principles behind it one of the worst of which is called The Precautionary Principle. It means that before any new experimental procedure, device, science, technology, or whatever should be implemented every precaution that can be beforehand considered should be taken. Well because it is impossible to foresee every single danger in something this principle effectively halts all progress.

Many people these days cannot handle the pace of change and so are in full on panic stricken "Future Shock". They wish to put everything on hold. However, it's not possible to halt progress but it is possible through laws and regulations and mob rule panic, to slow it down. However, slowing certain things down causes lives to be lost. The following is something along this line. Though the person involved might be able to Strictly speaking survive without the described procedure, it would hardly be called living.

Imagine eating and being unable to seal off things from dribbling out of your mouth because you have no lips! Imagine losing half your face and going through the rest of your life facing the world as such. Many brave folks have had to do so with no relief in sight whatsoever throughout history. A new and history making procedure could change all that but wouldn't you know it, some people think it is "UNETHICAL". Go figure. What ever could be their reasoning that a face transplant would be unethical especially when medical and psychologically necessary?

Surgeons Criticized Over Face Transplant

By JOHN LEICESTER and MARILYNN MARCHIONE, Associated Press Writers

PARIS - An ethics debate broke out over the world's first partial face transplant Thursday with one surgeon challenging the decision to operate, while others suggested a bit of jealousy might be at play.

That's probably the most telling part of this for reasons why ethicists put their noses where they ought not to.

At the same time, several doctors raised concerns about the psychological health of the French woman who received a transplanted nose, lips and chin on Sunday. She had been brutally mauled by a dog in May, and her identity remains unknown.

Of course this makes perfect sense. Only the perfectly mentally healthy deserve psychologically stabilizing surgery. Please note my sarcastic tone.

Dr. Laurent Lantieri, an adviser to the French medical ethics panel, said the surgeons who operated violated the panel's advice because they failed to try reconstructive surgery first. He said a transplant donor was immediately sought without trying to repair the woman's face with more conventional surgery.

Prey tell with what they were going to reconstruct missing lips with?

Lantieri, who had seen a picture of the woman, said, "She had a complete amputation of both lips. The tip of the nose was amputated." Her new donated facial parts came from a brain-dead woman whose family gave consent.

The panel had previously objected to full face transplants but said partial ones could be considered under strict circumstances, which included first trying normal surgery.

"The ethics committee said this kind of transplant should never be considered as an emergency procedure," Lantieri said.

What? Are they insane? What if someone's life depends on it? At this moment I cannot think of why a face transplant would mean the difference between immediate life and death in an emergency situation but I rankle against the principle that they could arbitrarily say such a statement. How could they know for certain some day some situation might arise that does?

However, surgeon Denys Pellerin, of the National Consultative Ethics Committee advised by Lantieri said, "as long as the transplant is not total, it is not unethical."

Excuse me? What could possibly be the reasoning here? Maybe one day when newer methods could rebuild a patients own face we'd then have reason to take pause at the identity issues raised. However, by that time it might be possible to wear a different face at will, who knows? Right now I see no plausible reasonable objection when it helps someone get through their life after a defacing injury.

And Dr. Jean-Pierre Chavoin, secretary general of the French society of plastic surgery, noted that Lantieri had planned to do a face transplant himself and had been beaten.

For shame.

Carine Camby, director general of the agency under the French Health Ministry that coordinates organ procurement, said normal reconstructive surgery could not have been used in this case.

"It is precisely because there was no way to restore the functions of this patient by normal plastic surgery that we attempted this

transplant," Camby said. "She could no longer eat normally, she had great difficulty speaking and there is no possibility with plastic surgery today to repair the muscles around the mouth which allow people to articulate when they speak and not spit out food when they eat."

As I figured.

Camby also said the patient "received many psychiatric examinations. The psychiatrists decided that she understood the surgery and that she accepted all of the consequences, including the risk of rejection and of failure, the risk of immune supression treatments and the need to take them for life."

But Chavoin, who took part in preparatory meetings about the patient's case over the last several months, questioned her psychological health.

The patient "seems to have quite a depressive profile," he said.

Hmmm, maybe because SHE GOT HALF HER FACE TORN OFF!!?? These guys take the cake. It's the Precautionary Principle at work in practical application and it costs lives when physicians are too cautious to try what very often may be someone's last hope. Medical malpractice is no excuse. Patients are always required to sign away rights to sue in such experimental cases.

I have personal experience here. I also have personal experience with having trouble getting new and experimental procedures even considered let alone acted upon. I lost a kidney while looking around for someone to try something that I had invented. It wasn't until I found someone with the same idea that I had before I got the lifesaving procedure done that has contributed to saving my only remaining kidney. How about that? A mere PreMed dropout (due to medical leave of absence) having a unique and new solution to a problem and an actual surgeon having the same idea contemporaneously without knowledge of each other? Cool, huh?!

Back to the case of these (so called) ethicists passing judgment on this facial transplant. Here again we see not only the Precautionary Principle in effect but yet again the prejudicial application of mental health as a precursor to receiving treatment. I myself had to get psych tested before having an abdominal implant of an anesthetic drug pump inserted that also helped save my life from severe spasticity and pain. The condition is common with spinal injury and called Hyper Reflexic Autonomic Parasympathetic Dysreflexia, Dysreflexia for short. It causes extreme high blood pressures that threatened daily to cause heart disease and the immediate danger of a stroke.

The Medtronic Intrathecal Baclofen pump implant has saved my life. I have no doubt of that. It was getting insane the amount of incessant random muscle cramping my body was doing at the time. Still I barely squeaked by because on the psych test I answered to the negative for believing in the supernatural while answering to the positive that extraterrestrial life may exist. Now I'd have thought those were very rational answers but noooo! Imagine being told you can't have a life saving procedure because you have a history of say depression or whatever. Who today is totally free of ever having been depressed?

The operation was done at a hospital in Amiens, in northern France, by ground-breaking transplant surgeon Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard and Dr. Bernard Devauchelle. Dubernard led teams that performed a hand transplant in 1998 and the world's first double forearm transplant in January 2000.

The hand transplant recipient later had it amputated. Doctors said the man failed to take the required drugs and his body rejected the limb.

Lantieri said he was fearful that this operation could turn out like that first hand transplant if the patient is psychologically unstable.

Dubernard did not return a phone call seeking comment Thursday. A news conference is set for Friday.

The face transplant patient, now in Dubernard's ward in a Lyon hospital in southern France, was also to have a second experimental treatment _ an infusion of the donor's bone marrow _ to try to prevent rejection of the new tissue.

"Maybe Jean-Michel Dubernard is revolutionizing the concept of transplantation," Lantieri said, but added that the patient now was being subjected to two untested treatments.

So frickin what!! If the patient agrees and it is necessary or has a good chance to prevent the failure of the first operation, then why not? It's the patient's choice.

Lantieri, who developed his own plans to attempt a partial face transplant, said members of Dubernard's team contacted him last spring, seeking details of his protocol.

He said that a surgeon in Lille where the transplant donor lived, had reviewed the woman's record and told him he was concerned about the circumstances of her injury. It involved one or two dogs, Lantieri said.

Why should the manner of injury have anything to do with it? I suppose it might if someone purposely injured themselves and it was thought possible to do the same again making the efforts to repair possibly wasted effort then yes by all means reconsider doing it but this is not the case here. Even if she still owns the dog or dogs responsible, which I highly doubt, it would be highly unlikely she'd place herself in the same danger again. Something that traumatic is nothing to chance repeatedly.

In the United States, surgeons and psychologists at two medical centers that hope to offer face transplants _ the Cleveland Clinic and the University of Louisville _ declined to comment Thursday on the French case.

Go figure, maybe because they had more sense? Perhaps here s a good place to mention the apparent differences in the two schools of luddism ethics I see that seem to come from opposing schools of thought "across the pond", as they say, from each other. It seems to be more right wing oriented in the US and more toward the left wing of the spectrum in Europe. In the US Christian Fundamentalism often flavors the luddism with people citing issues as being "against god or playing god". In Europe it seems to be the fruit loopy part of the left wing spectrum that dominates the luddite thought, such as the attitude towards GM foods fostered by extreme Greenie thought where it is merely issues that they feel are "against nature" rather than a deity. Now I am an avowed Liberal/(small L) libertarian (sort of) but the European lefty attitude against GM food and GM people is way way too left for me even. Of course it barely needs being said that I strongly disagree with the motivations behind US right wing ("Xian Right") flavored luddism. The very meaning of "Conservative" is "Prefers the status quote, resists change".

In an interview at the Cleveland Clinic in July, surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow stressed the several years she had spent developing procedures and how carefully her team now is working to select potential candidates for the operation.

"I hope nobody will be frivolous or do things just for fame. We are almost over-cautious," she said at the time.

Another surgeon familiar with the French case sounded more optimistic despite the woman's horrific injuries, which he said were caused by her own dog.

"She still has her own eyes, which are a lot of a person's expression ... we'd expect she'd turn out to be a pleasant-looking girl," Dr. Earl Owen told the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

Owen said he supervised the French surgeons as they practiced for the procedure. He said the woman will look more like herself than the donor, who he said was a woman.

"We expect the bone structure underneath to be a more powerful delineator of what the outcome will be physically than the skin and the nose and the lips," Owen told the Morning Herald.

Lantieri also said that while he had concerns, "I'm still very positive.

"Dubernard is a great surgeon. We have to wait now to see if it succeeds."

I sincerely hope it does succeed. I hope many other people can benefit from face transplants and bone marrow transplantation to counter immune rejection of transplanted tissues. The luddite ethicists need to shut the hell up and stop this luddite cultural trend that is holding up progress and hurting people and costing lives.