Letter to the New York Times:

Charles Siebert's article on facial transplants was fascinating, though I felt he did stumble in the end: "We are on the cusp of being able to see even our faces -- the most easily abstracted aspect of our existence -- as one more part of our biology." If that were true, then wouldn't such an enlightened understanding negate any need for facial transplants? If we truly understood the face to be one more part of our biology, surely we wouldn't concern ourselves nearly so much with its appearance. (Its health is different subject.) Nor would we have such narrow and intolerant standards for beauty. Instead, it seems more likely that society will continue to value the superficial and for most of us to resist perceiving of our faces as complex masses of cells, as organs. Instead, it seems likely that people will continue to seek more plastic surgery—even when they don’t need it—to preserve the superficial and to align themselves with certain norms. So it’s our society or species’ stigmatization of the abnormal that would cultivate the desire for such a transplant in the first place. For the sake of those suffer such stigma, I hope facial transplants are a success because I can’t imagine society becoming so enlightened any time soon.