Of face-offs and vaulting ambition

Last night I got caught up in the usual paroxysm of cinematic pre-release non-coincidental schlocky programming. You know what I mean; that astonishing phenomenon whereby one is trapped in a vortex of barely entertaining films.

Let's say Kevin Costner has a flick in the near offing. One can be assured that you will be obliged to click by Tin Cup, Waterworld, and The Bodyguard in high rotation. Thankfully few cable companies are actually cruel enough to schedule Dances With Wolves.

So here I was in the wee hours of the morn watching Nick Cage do his criminale insano thing in Face Off; noting groggily that I'd watched Matchstick Men earlier in the day and was probably going to have to deal with Con Air sometime this week. Would it kill these TV people to give me a little Raising Arizona or Leaving Las Vegas? But I digress.

Read on...

I scoffed on cue during the face transplant scenes. Such foolishness, I muttered sagely. Absurdity equalled only by the Logan's Run laser facial reconstruction scene. What about blood types? What about scarring?
What about vascular intricacies? The thing's just not plausible, I bitched. I'm willing to suspend a great deal of disbelief to enjoy me some Nick Cage, but really, they ask too much in this flick.

All of which goes to show, I don't know jack about jack; because in the next little while five men and seven women will visit the Cleveland Clinic to be screened for the chance to have a face transplant. In a Herculean push at the medical envelope Dr Maria Siemionow hopes to give persons who've been catastrophically disfigured a new life. Her critics voice objections similar to mine.

They paint the frighteningly surreal image of a worst-case scenario: a transplanted face being rejected and sloughing away, leaving the patient worse off than before...

Complications could include infections that turn your new face black and require a second transplant or reconstruction with skin grafts. Drugs to prevent rejection will be needed lifelong, and they raise the risk of kidney damage and cancer.

Read the rest of the AP article HERE

posted by dorna! @ 11:29 am