Centre for History and Philosophy of Science seminar - Dr Fay Bound Alberti (QMUL)

"Your gift will not be wasted": framing the emotional history and ethics of face transplants.

Since 2005 human face transplants, once a topic of science fiction, have become a surgical reality. Though limited to a select number of patients, for reasons to be addressed, face transplants offer a unique opportunity to consider the relationships between identity, bodily integrity, affect and surgical innovation in the 21st century. This paper explores the framing of face transplants through the lens of emotion history and ethics, asking what an interdisciplinary historical approach can bring to contemporary medical practice.

Location details

Baines Wing (G. 36)