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It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie - A woman loses her face in a horrific crime and then she receives a face transplant.  Connie Culp received a miracle five years after a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole in the middle of face. Hundreds of bone splinters were embedded in her face; her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and one eye were destroyed and only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were undamaged.  After 30 operations, including bone graphs from her ribs and skin graphs from her thighs, Connie was still unable to eat solid food, smell or breathe on her own.  

In December 2008, she underwent a 22 hour operation in which 80 percent of her face was replaced with that of another woman who had just died.

Despite a bit of swelling and compromised expression, she can now talk, smile and taste food.  As her circulation improves, so will her abilities and before long she will return to a life of normalcy.  In the meantime, Connie has a message to others, “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…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.”

Taken just one step forward, face transplants could become the latest accessory, changed on a whim to match a mood or to turn back time.  Criminals could swap faces to avoid identification or assume the identity of others. The ramifications are frightening; imagine a world in which identity thieves take more than your social security or credit account numbers, they take your life and then your face.