Free Republic

Doctors at New York University this week announced "the first successful transplant of a partial face and an entire eye." And the road to getting there was both heartbreaking and incredible: In May at NYU Langone Health in New York City, the surgery was performed on a 46-year-old man who had suffered severe electrical burns to his face, left eye and left arm. He does not yet have vision in the transplanted eye and may never regain it there, but early evidence suggests the eye itself is healthy and may be capable of transmitting neurological signals to the brain. The...

October 06, 2009, 0:00 p.m. The Convenient DeathBy the Editors Wait for patients to die before taking their organs, and the organs won’t be as fresh. Let doctors take the organs from living patients — even if it means causing them to die a little faster than they otherwise would — and the supply of usable organs will go up. Some other patient will get a second chance at life, and the dead guy won’t miss anything: What could possibly go wrong with this idea? The editors of Nature are well aware that this proposal might seem a little...