May 11, 2010, - 3:47 pm
Should Chimp Lady Get to Cut to Front of Line for Face Transplant?
Remember Charla Nash, the woman who tried to help lure a chimpanzee pet back into her friend’s house, and was mauled and disfigured by it? Her friend was warned not to keep a pet like that, but did it anyway. And she, herself, must have known of the danger.
Now, Nash is a candidate for a face transplant, a rare and costly procedure which few disfigured people are lucky enough to get. Part of the reason that it’s rare is that there aren’t a lot of suitable faces that are donated for transplant. Plus, it’s a very difficult and lengthy procedure that has been done less than a handful of times.
But there are many people whose faces were disfigured through no fault of their own–whether by tumor, growths, or accidents. They are more deserving than this woman who took tremendous risk by helping to try to lure a wild chimpanzee back into a house, despite every common sense notion of staying away from it.
Why is she undergoing preliminary evaluation for a face and hand transplant at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, ahead of other more worthy, deserving candidates?
The thinking is that she deserves to be at the head of the line because she has problems breathing, etc.:
Nash’s injuries are so severe that she cannot eat or breathe normally, relying instead on feeding and breathing tubes. Blindness makes her life harder, Pomahac said.
“For a blind person, not having hands is probably the worst possible scenario,’’ he said. “The hands are very critical for her function in the future.’’
As tragic as is what happened to her, should this woman get to cut to the front of the line?
Tags: Charla Nash, face transplant, Harvard Medical School
From what I remember it wasn’t her monkey, it was her friends, and she went to her friends house to try to calm the monkey down.
M: Correct. Fixed. Thanks. DS
Matt on May 11, 2010 at 3:52 pm