No, this isn’t about John Kerry.

It’s actually far more serious, a quite interesting LA Times article about the possibilities of facial transplants.

Of course the first thing I thought was, “What if the recipient’s body rejects a transplant? What then? Wha…?” The article sort of answered it, but not really.

They say they’re close, that microsurgical techniques are in place, that they’ve done it with cadavers, but that the big issue is the possibility of rejection as well as the side effects of the drugs used to prevent rejection. Personally, I don’t see an ethical issue here, except, of course, in relationship to the burden of treatment matter. Maybe I’m just too much of a pragmatist or just ignorant of the ethical issues that are, indeed, involved. What I see is a glimmer of hope for people who bear the burden of serious disfigurement, mostly from burns or cancer.

“As for surgical technique, a face transplant could have been done 10 years ago,” said Dr. John Barker, director of research for the surgeons’ group. “And now with the preliminary results we have in our ethics studies, we think it’s time.”

The group is evaluating potential transplant recipients, as is a group of collaborating physicians in the Netherlands, he said. French surgeons also are said to be considering the operation.

Public acceptance is not the only roadblock, however. Many doctors remain unconvinced of the medical need for the operation, questioning whether the risks of the surgery outweigh its potential value. A face recipient would need to take powerful medications for the remainder of his or her life to prevent rejection by the body. He or she also would face the possibility that the transplant would fail — and the unknown psychological effect of having one’s cardinal form of identity, even if disfigured, so wholly transformed.