In Paris, the Guardian's reporter Kim Willsher cracks open the "row" over face transplantation there

"In Paris, the Guardian's reporter Kim Willsher cracks open the 'row' over face transplantation there. We now know that both the donor and the recipient were trying to commit suicide at the time that they each became eligible to participate in this little experiment. The donor hanged herself, and after having been declared brain dead her face was removed but a prosthetic of silicon implanted. The recipient, whose face had been mangled by her dog in its attempt to wake her, received what appears to be a successful transplant of a portion of face from the donor.

Then the ethicists became angry:

Yesterday a row broke out after Emmanuel Hirsch, a professor of medical ethics and a member of the Biomedicine Agency - one of the organisations whose approval was sought for the transplant - said his particular committee had not been informed of the surgery. 'I have the impression that everything was done in a hurry and that not all the questions involved were taken into account when there was no real urgency,' he told yesterday's Le Journal du Dimanche. 'We are talking about a pure experiment. Personally I would have expressed serious reservation about this transplant. I'd like to know why we weren't even informed about this operation.'
He raises one key question about the informed consent process for the experiment - could a woman who just attempted suicide consent to something of this kind in any kind of reasonable way?

But Professor Hirsch said that many worrying questions remained unanswered. 'How was the patient told about this, was it explained to her that she would be undergoing two experiments: the transplant but also a new immuno-suppressing treatment which involves the injection of stem cells from the bone marrow of the donor? The transplant, even partial, of a face is not just a medical but a psychological test because the identity of a person is involved. Was she well prepared for this?'

And perhaps there is more dramatic misconduct afoot, or so claims one of the other would-be-face-transplant-gods:

The Sunday newspaper also reported that another French plastic surgeon, Laurent Lantieri, claimed the transplant team stole his technique, after his request to carry out a face transplant in 2004 was rejected. He said one doctor involved in Ms Dinoire's transplant had called him in May 'to ask for my protocol - yes, I gave it to him', he told the newspaper. 'Afterwards? I didn't hear anything more.' "

Source:
Blogs.Bioethics.net
The Editor Blog of the American Journal of Bioethics