Institutionalized Personhood

Abstract

Drawing on my research with a group of Mexican reconstructive surgeons, I analyse how the broad debate surrounding face transplant surgery framed the team’s relationship with a patient who presented with severe facial disfigurement. According to the team, this patient was an ‘ideal candidate’ for the operation, a person whose particular state of health and suffering made face transplantation the preferred treatment option. I show that in seeking to treat the patient using the operation, the medical team came to produce a new imperative on the part of the Mexican State to extend its constitutional entitlement to protect the health of its citizens. This extension would allow for donor facial tissue to be harvested, for the operation to be performed, and for patients to be operated upon. In presenting this case, I show that what is at stake at in the realm of face transplantation is more than the health of individual patients; it includes broader issues of how governments should respond to medical advancement.