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http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/burnett.html

Hey funny face

THANE BURNETT

- Toronto Sun

November 29, 2002

Let's face it, some days we look like someone we don't even recognize. There are moments when I can be quite handsome, and other times when I shock my wife when she opens up her eyes during sex.

Which is why the idea being presented this week at a British conference of plastic surgeons had me - and others I know - doing a double take. U.K. surgeons are setting the stage to perform the world's first full-face transplant in less than two years. It would mean taking the death-mask off a dead guy, or woman, and fitting it onto the front of someone else's skull.

In a medical marvel which mirrors the

John Travolta

and

Nicolas Cage

movie

Face Off,

doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London believe the procedure is justified in saving face for those who have been horribly disfigured by cancer or fire or a head-on collision with a bridge support at 120 km/h. In the past, massive skin grafts to the face haven't been effective because the skin from other parts of the body is too stiff and lifeless to animate a face.

Peter Butler, the plastic surgeon who wants to do the ultimate facelift, says new and improved drugs have now made the unimaginable, imaginable. Butler told the British Association of Plastic Surgery conference this week, he would use lasers to cut away blood vessels, arteries and veins and skin from a dead person's face.

In more complex surgeries, bone also could be used. Then the donor face would be surgically attached to the head of the patient. The idea has ignited an ethical bonfire among those in the U.K. medical community.

Skeptical English GP Carol Cooper was quoted this week in the Fleet Street tabloid, The Sun, noting: "

Organ transplants are one thing - changing your face is wrong.

One prominent Toronto surgeon went further. "

This is a nightmare, because our patients are going to somehow expect us to transplant a new face on them in 18 months

," said the veteran cutter, who did not want to be named. "

The truth is this technology is still a ways off, and won't be used for patients who just want to look better ... perhaps ever

But why not, doctor? What's the difference between taking someone's heart, and taking their high cheek bones? Why can I use someone's eyes, but not their eyelids?

It's time we all did an about-face on the possibilities this offers. That I could have Elvis' nose, if it's still around in a pickle jar in a Graceland cupboard. That name-calling, boorish Ontario MPPs could learn to turn the other cheek - though it would be someone else's.

That

Mel Lastman

could look like

Mel Gibson

- if Gibson died and the Toronto mayor got his mug. And Lastman grew four feet taller. That

Michael Jackson

could finally truly be what he always has tried to be - an ugly white woman.

That Prime Minister

Jean Chretien

could ... wait, he already is two-faced.

That future Miss World competitors like Canada's reigning Queen of overexposure,

Lynsey Bennett

, could go to pageants in the most violent and vile Hell holes on Earth without risking a polished fingernail - just by sewing a face on a body double.

That

Osama bin Laden

could become the 17-year-old pimply faced teen who puts "golden topping" on your popcorn at the movies - and you wouldn't know the difference. That it's the international terrorist, I mean. You'll always know it's not real butter. That there's hope for most radio personalities of being seen in public.

That Gladiator

Russell Crowe

could become the man he always wanted to be. Actually, it would involve transplanting his own face onto himself. That dozens of people could have their faces restored when

Liz Taylor

finally dies.

Or that you, a frazzled, working mom with no time to even rub on lipstick in the morning, could literally have the mug of supermodel

Heidi Klum

. That your husband would pay anything for that miracle.

And that on days like these, when I try to be funny, I could show my face again.

Reach Thane Burnett at thane.burnett@tor.sunpub.com or 416-947-2444. ]

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