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Katie's New Face

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Katie's New Face

#31

Post by Markoff »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #23
PunchTornado wrote: post #15

They didn't mention in which state was the donor before her grandmother agreed to donate her face. Was she already dead from the overdose? Did they just take the full skull to the hospital?

I think it mentioned that she was in a coma when the grandmother made that decision. A fascinating part of this is considering whether I as an organ donor would want my face continuing to exist on someone else after my own death.

it's not like the recipient will be resembling you at all, they almost never look anything like donor

Re: Katie's New Face

#32

Post by jbob2000 »

Markoff wrote: post #30
jbob2000 wrote: post #27

> While the two were outside talking about how upset Katie was, she went into the bathroom, put the barrel of Robert’s .308-caliber hunting rifle below her chin, and pulled the trigger. Why did she have access to that gun? I bet Robert considers himself a "safe" gun owner too. Keep your guns locked and separate from your ammunition. Gun culture takes another victim.

better solution would be not having guns at all, you don't see these suicides in Europe or very rarely due to limited access

Oh 100%, I agree. But good luck having that conversation in the US.

Re: Katie's New Face

#33

Post by throwaway5752 »

jbob2000 wrote: post #27

> While the two were outside talking about how upset Katie was, she went into the bathroom, put the barrel of Robert’s .308-caliber hunting rifle below her chin, and pulled the trigger. Why did she have access to that gun? I bet Robert considers himself a "safe" gun owner too. Keep your guns locked and separate from your ammunition. Gun culture takes another victim.

I hate to contribute to it going off topic, but it really is a sad postscript that what could have been an impulsive action as a teenager had such tragic aftermath. Totally separately from reading this I was recently reminded that more than 20,000 people kill themselves with guns in the US per year. And looking this statistic up to confirm it, I learned that people in households with guns were more likely to die by suicide than those without by a factor of 3-4 (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199208133270705 via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...)

Re: Katie's New Face

#34

Post by dang »

brianyu8 wrote: post #17

Non-interactive version of the article can be found here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/face-tra...

Thanks, we've switched to that more textual link. The interactive version is pretty impactful, so people should probably look at both. That link is https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/face-tra....

Re: Katie's New Face

#36

Post by jonah »

nhfoiwehf wrote: post #16
jonah wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, we could just stop sending our young people out to get blown up... Kudos to the DoD for funding these experiments but they're solving a problem of their own creation...

> a problem of their own creation... The DoD didn't invent war. It doesn't declare war. It just fights wars. Who sends our young people to be blown up? Our elected leadership. So we all made this problem.

Fair enough.

I think we need to market images of badly disfigured veterans as a tragedy instead of an honor.

Re: Katie's New Face

#37

Post by [deleted] »

jonah wrote: post #12
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> Much of Katie’s care is being paid for by the Department of Defense, because her youth and ballistic trauma make her a stand-in for wounded warriors. For the rest of her life, she’ll take powerful antirejection drugs with risks of their own, becoming a lifelong subject in the study of this still experimental surgery. Kudos to the DoD for doing this. The military historically has been the driver for advances in surg…

Or, you know, we could just stop sending our young people out to get blown up... Kudos to the DoD for funding these experiments but they're solving a problem of their own creation...

[deleted]

Re: Katie's New Face

#38

Post by da_chicken »

grillorafael wrote: post #18

Does anyone know why most (if not all) face transplant have such wide jaw line ?

I would guess that it's swelling and scar tissue buildup (fibrosis) from the surgery and ongoing autoimmune response. As far as her immune system is concerned, the grafted face is a foreign invader. She's going to take anti-rejection drugs her whole life and she will always be at risk for total rejection in the future.

Re: Katie's New Face

#39

Post by nrjames »

giarc wrote: post #28
PunchTornado wrote: post #15

They didn't mention in which state was the donor before her grandmother agreed to donate her face. Was she already dead from the overdose? Did they just take the full skull to the hospital?

I think in the one picture you can see them removing the donor face and it appears her whole body is present.

Yes, whenever feasible, the donor is still on life support and the organs are removed before the body dies, ideally in close proximity to the recipient. I used to work with the eye harvesting team all the time when I was a surgical tech. A quick Googling turned up this: https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/i-harvest-human-eyeball...
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