A US medical team has requested permission to perform the world’s first face transplant, New Scientist has learned.Researchers from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, have requested approval to carry out the complex and controversial operation. The team is about to submit a lengthy document detailing their plan to a university ethics committee.Sceptics have questioned whether such a transplant would be worth the side-effects of anti-rejection drugs, and whether the family of a donor would recognise their loved one in the face of the recipient.But the Louisville team has carried out research that, they claim, indicates such obstacles can be overcome. The team has been using the faces of bodies donated for medical research to practise the groundbreaking operation and the results suggest that a transplanted face will not be recognisable as either the donor or the recipient - in effect creating a third face.
