Many people will remember the story of the woman who was attacked by her employer’s pet chimpanzee. She was viciously attacked by the animal while working in the home, and her entire was face was essentially destroyed. While this normally would have required a lifetime of wearing protective dressings and pain and suffering, she was the recipient of a full face transplant, which was an experimental procedure at that time.
Since having the procedure after her horrific on-the-job accident, she was required to take drugs know as an anti-rejection agent. Whenever someone has a transplant, there is a decent chance that the body will think the donor tissue is a foreign object, which essentially it is, and will fight the donor tissue causing the organ transplant to be rejected. In the case of a face transplant, there is a lot of medication that is required, and that medication has a lot of side effects. Continue reading