A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors;

for the expression of all his history, and his wants. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life

The face is the feature which best distinguishes a person. There are special regions of the human brain, such as the fusiform face area (FFA), which when damaged prevent the recognition of the faces of even intimate family members. The pattern of specific organs such as the eyes or parts thereof are used in biometric identification to uniquely identify individuals. The face has uses of expression appearance, and identity amongst others. It also has different senses like olfaction, taste, hearing, and vision. Disfigurement is the state of having one's appearance deeply and persistently harmed medically, as from a disease, birth defect, or wound. Disfigurement, whether caused by a benign or malignant condition, often leads to severe psychosocial problems such as negative body image; depression, difficulties in one's social, sexual, and professional lives; prejudice; and intolerance. This is partly due to how the individual copes with looking 'visibly different', though the extent of the disfigurement rarely correlates with the degree of distress the sufferer feels. An additional factor which affects sufferers of a disfigurement is the reaction they get from other people. Studies have shown that the general population respond to people with a disfigurement with less trust, less respect and often try to avoid making contact or having to look at the disfigurement. Disfigurements affecting visible areas such as the face, arms and hands are thought to present greater difficulty for sufferers to cope with than do other disfigurements. Face transplant is a medical procedure to replace all or part of a person's face. The world's first full face transplant was completed in Spain in 2010. The world's first successful full face transplant was completed in Turkey in 2012. Up until the transplant surgery in Turkey, the procedure was considered experimental.

People with faces disfigured by trauma, burns, disease, or birth defects might aesthetically benefit from the procedure. Professor Peter Butler at the Royal Free Hospital first suggested this approach in treating people with facial disfigurement in a Lancet Article in 2002. This suggestion caused considerable debate around the ethics of this procedure at that time. The alternative to a face transplant is to move the patient's own skin from their back, buttocks or thighs to their face in a series of as many as 50 operations to regain even limited function and a face that is often likened to a mask or a living quilt. L. Scott Levin MD FACS, Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, has described the procedure as "the single most important area of reconstructive research."

Faces are essential to expressing emotion, consciously or unconsciously. Being able to read emotion in another's face is "the fundamental basis for empathy and the ability to interpret a persons reactions and predict the probability of ensuing behaviours.

Whether the procedure fails or succeeds as long as its objective is for the benefit of the recipient, and conforms to experimental protocols, with the recipients (or the recipients family) and the donors (or the donors family) consent for me it is moral. It is the donors and recipients will as well as the medical professional to do the procedure. It is an agreement between them. They are all taking risks in this therefore morally responsible for one another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_transplant#Popular_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfigurement