Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing • Hacker News Board

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#51

Post by alan-crowe » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #29

Enginerrrd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's part of the arms race with pathogens that has been going on for a billion years since multi-cellular life first appeared. Pathogens do lots of very clever things to hide from the immune system, so the immune system is tuned to detect very subtle changes. The body largely operates on zero-trust network models, except for a few locations where the benefit of a too-active immune system has serious consequen…

To add to this: if the immune system would just check that the cell is human then every invader would just evolve to pass that check. The only viable way to defend is to mark the cells as belonging to this specific human. That way even if some bacteria evolves to trick my immune system it's unlikely to also trick yours, and the infection can't spread.

Additionally, if the immune system would just check that the cell is human, then humans would be vulnerable to contagious cancer, such as the facial tumor disease suffered by Tasmanian Devils

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#52

Post by kls » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

tempguy9999 wrote: post #11

egypturnash wrote: post #5

I so do not want to click on this link in case there are pictures. I really do not want to see what this looks like. Are there pictures?

There's a pic and it's not so pretty. What's much worse to me is the description of what her husband did to her. Consider skipping this one altogether.

Yeah not good, how can men bring themselves to such violence against women. I am sitting here as I write this looking at my wife and cant for the life of me fathom doing such a ghastly act to her or even a woman that I don't know, no matter what I believed (real or imaginary) their transgressions where against me. I don't know the back story but if he was capable of doing this, she probably left him for good reason as I cant imagine this was the first incident. A person has the right to leave if they feel you are no longer the right person for them, sometimes it happens in pretty shitty ways, but it does not justify physical harm to that person.

I am just left speechless, there really should be a death penalty for intentionally maiming a person to the point that they will live the rest of their life in suffering and sorrow. No one deserves the fate this woman has been left with. I am sorry she will have to endure another transplant.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#53

Post by newnewpdro » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

plutonorm wrote: post #27

tempguy9999 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pic and it's not so pretty. What's much worse to me is the description of what her husband did to her. Consider skipping this one altogether.

I'm a live and let live, everyone has their own pain and their own story, we all are just doing our best sort of guy... But I want to string that guy up.

It appears he's already dead.

https://www.ibtimes.com/who-carmen-tarleton-lye-attack-victi...

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#54

Post by SamBam » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

aphextim wrote: post #35

xwdv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say it’s probably more like some kind of checksum against the DNA. If the body detects something has been changed from what was there before it dispatches the white blood cells to kill it off. Immunosuppressants are a way to bypass the checksum, but only for some limited time. Maybe we need a way to change the checksum values altogether, but then the whole body could be rendered rejected and cease to function (de…

I love tech analogies to biological functions. It amazes me how much 'tech' is always running on a cellular/molecular level. Thank you!

We always reach for the analogies that match our experience most closely. If this were 200 years ago, we'd say that the immune system was like a lock-and-key mechanism, or perhaps we'd say it was like a bank checking for correct signatures.

Indeed, I remember a kid's cartoon about our bodies when I was growing up that showed germs that had evolved the correct antigens as being spies passing through passport control with forged passports.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#55

Post by chrshawkes » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

This is a horrific story I wish I didn't read about. The husband only got a 30 to 70 year sentence for this??? He died in prison but this is a case for the death penalty all the way. This guy ended up dying of natural causes in prison. This woman is living a tortured existence and this guy gets 3 hots and a cot & cable TV until he dies. Disgusting.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#56

Post by ravar » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #46

ravar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently listened to this podcast. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21051174 It is about widespread fraud in the drug industry. During the interview it was mentioned that some people are seeing organ failure due getting fraudulent drugs from abroad. It is possible that this is not what happened in this case, but it seems plausible. To anyone who has the time, listen to this podcast. It was really educational an…

The human brain is wired to make connections, but it's important to step back and realize the universe of "plausible" explanations are almost infinite. It is nothing more than rank speculation that these two stories are somehow related. The world is teeming with junk science like this, and it can be dangerous and even fatal. (E.g. anti-vexers). That's why I think it's important to recognize it when you see it, and ca…

The evidence is the podcast/interview. It is not known the extent to which generic drugs are affected. But in almost all the Indian plans investigated there was evidence of fraud, and I believe evidence of fraud was found in 80% of Chinese generic pharmaceutical plants. Additionally according to the author of the book there have already been cases of organ rejections due to fraudulent generics.

Before dismissing my comments out of hand maybe you should look at my evidence.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#57

Post by 0x38B » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #53

plutonorm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a live and let live, everyone has their own pain and their own story, we all are just doing our best sort of guy... But I want to string that guy up.

It appears he's already dead. https://www.ibtimes.com/who-carmen-tarleton-lye-attack-victi...

Quoting the linked article:

“I have fully forgiven him and I don’t have the same attitude that a lot of people have with his treatment of me,” Tarleton said. “I have moved on so well and in so many ways. I feel like, for me, it ends a big chapter in my life.”

More than what happened to her, what stands out to me is that she's moved on. That's strength. There are things that no one can take away.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#58

Post by ssully » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

tempguy9999 wrote: post #11

egypturnash wrote: post #5

I so do not want to click on this link in case there are pictures. I really do not want to see what this looks like. Are there pictures?

There's a pic and it's not so pretty. What's much worse to me is the description of what her husband did to her. Consider skipping this one altogether.

Yeah, it is an incredibly terrible story. Sometimes in fiction (books, movies, etc) I think how unrealistic some depictions of cruelty can be, but then I read stories like this and remember that fiction rarely captures the actual levels of cruelty people are capable of.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#59

Post by eecc » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

The f*cking prick needs to be sat in front of a picture of his victim and stare at it 14 hrs a day. Then be given 2 hrs to wash and feel what he has brutally taken away from his victim. Then sleep 8 hrs in order to be fully aware for the next sitting the next day. For about... the rest of his useless life.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#60

Post by rcthompson » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

radlad wrote: post #20

Medicalidiot wrote: post #7

This is to be expected. Any time we do any transplant immunosupressants are given to the recipient for the rest of their life, but this only slows the inevitable. Heart transplants recipients all get accelerated atherosclerosis. Lung transplant recipients all get long term fibrosis. We buy time with these procedures and do everything we can to keep them going, but if you have a transplant, you're in a really bad spot…

> Any time we do any transplant immunosupressants are given to the recipient for the rest of their life, but this only slows the inevitable. Is this true that it is inevitable? My understanding, from my girlfriend attending medical school (only M1), is that for many types of transplants, when immunosupressants are taken properly, it is unlikely that the organ will ever be rejected. For example, only 10-20% of patient…

Even if there is no acute rejection event, long-term accumulation of damage from the host's immune system attacking the graft at a low background level is still very likely. Immune suppression has to walk a tightrope that in addition to being very thin is also constantly moving around. Each time you get sick, if your immune suppression is too aggressive, you might just die. If it's not aggressive enough, the pro-immune signalling generated in response to the infection might override the immune suppression and trigger rejection of the graft. Any other event that triggers or suppresses an immune response also has similar risks associated with it.

It's kind of similar to how diabetes patients need to constantly monitor their blood sugar and manually adjust their insulin levels to compensate, but on a longer time scale (generally weeks to months rather than minutes to hours). But with diabetes, at least you have the potential for almost direct control over your blood sugar levels (by regulating food intake). There is no such direct control for your level of immune activity, nor is there a simple and quick blood test to measure whether immune suppression is at the right level.

In short, anyone with a transplant is walking a wobbly tightrope of immune suppression for the rest of their life, and they sometimes don't even know they've fallen off until they hit the ground.

(Source: I have previously worked in a lab studying transplant rejection and trying to, among other things, develop such a simple and quick blood test: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24725967)