Woman appears at press conference

Connie Culp showed off her new face this week, five years after her husband
blew her old one away with a shotgun. The 46-year-old Ohio woman told
journalists at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic that she was very
grateful to the transplant team and wanted to foster acceptance of people with
disfiguring injuries.

"When somebody has a disfigurement and don’t look as pretty as you do, don’t
judge them, because you never know what happened to them," she said. "Don’t
judge people who don’t look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day
it might be all taken away."

The face came from an unidentified woman. Ms Culp had to endure 30 operations
to reconstruct her face, but until the 22-hour transplant operation, she could
not eat solid food, breathe on her own, or smell. She will have to take
immune-suppressant drugs for the rest of her life, but it seems a small price to
pay to return to something approaching normality. Hers was the world’s fourth
face transplant; so far seven of the complex operations have been performed. ~
New
York Times, May 5

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Michael Cook

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