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