{"id":44807,"date":"2026-02-20T13:46:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=44807"},"modified":"2026-02-20T13:46:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:46:29","slug":"the-guinea-pigs-who-had-face-transplant-surgery-podcast-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=44807","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018guinea pigs\u2019 who had face transplant surgery \u2013 podcast | Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In 2019, <strong>Robert Chelsea<\/strong> made medical history, becoming the first black patient to ever have a full face transplant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He had previously suffered from a devastating car crash, leaving his face severely burnt. Once, he recalls to <strong>Annie Kelly<\/strong>, a little boy on the street shouted that he \u2018looked like a zombie\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Yet if the offer of the surgery seemed like a miracle, he was to find out that life after the transplant was much, much more complicated than he could have imagined.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u2018Get a new good, clean, healthy strong set of knee pads,\u2019 he tells Annie, of his advice for others thinking of the same procedure, because they will end up praying a lot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Professor and historian <strong>Fay Bound Alberti \u2013 <\/strong>author of The Face: A Cultural History &#8211; talks through the darker side of the transplants, and questions whether doctors should even be performing them at all.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dcr-1inf02i\"><\/span> Photograph: Franck CRUSIAUX\/Gamma-Rapho\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2019, Robert Chelsea made medical history, becoming the first black patient to ever have a full face transplant. He had previously suffered from a devastating car crash, leaving his face severely burnt. Once, he recalls to Annie Kelly, a little boy on the street shouted that he \u2018looked like a zombie\u2019. Yet if the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[584,14011,37,7596,515,1589,1760],"class_list":{"0":"post-44807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-face","9":"tag-guinea","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-pigs","12":"tag-podcast","13":"tag-surgery","14":"tag-transplant"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}