National Geographic Magazine - UK September 2018

ADREA SCHNEIDER’S HEART went to a woman in her 60s. Her liver went to a 66-year-old man. Her right lung was given to a 51-year-old woman, the left to a woman age 62. Her kidneys and corneas were donated. Her uterus was used for medical research on infertility. Her face went to Katie Stubblefield. This is a story about that face—a gift from a young woman who died, to a 21-year-old woman who would become the youngest face transplant recipient in American history. It is a story about breakthrough science and the doctors, nurses, and surgeons who created a medical miracle. It is a story about perhaps the most distinctive part of our body and the very nature of human identity. It is a story of second chances. The story…

‘I WANT TO ENSURE THAT SCARS DON’T LIMIT SOCIAL INCLUSION OR WELL-BEING.’ WHEN YOUR APPEARANCE is drastically transformed in an instant, it’s life-changing. It’s been a decade since I survived a sulfuric acid attack that left me with severe burns across my face. In the following years, I’ve worked to redefine my sense of identity. With injuries such as mine, your face can be so damaged that your expressions may not convey how you feel, and you may even lose your ability to smile. It can be an isolating experience. You feel one way on the inside, but look completely different on the outside. The surgery on my face was pioneering. My medical team first applied a dermal substitute made of sheets of collagen and elastin and then grafted skin…

‘I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT IMPROVING THE MENTAL HEALTH CARE THAT WE CAN PROVIDE IN BURNS CASES.’ What drew you to plastic surgery? It has variety and problem-solving. In one day I may operate on a child, an elderly person, a face, a burn, skin cancer, and a set of amputated fingers. Plastic surgery involves an in-depth understanding of all anatomical structures, especially the blood vessels, nerves, and muscles that form the basis of surgical solutions. I love the fact that a solution I have for a specific reconstructive problem will often be different from that of one of my consulting colleagues. It’s art meeting science, with a bit of philosophy thrown in. Why did you specialize in burns? In the burns unit, diagnostics and intensive care play the most critical…

HEAT AND SWIRLS OF DUST above the cracked earth of northwestern Nevada make any sign of life look like a mirage. In the fall of 2016, photographer Robert Ormerod turned off the road and onto the dried lake bed of the Black Rock Desert in search of a rocket launch. On the horizon he could make out a hazy row of RVs—those of the attendees of a famed amateur-rocketry convention. Since 1991 the Federal Aviation Administration has granted the Tripoli Rocketry Association permission to shoot rockets up to 492,000 feet (93 miles) in the air for the event. It’s one of the few times when high-altitude rockets can be safely and legally launched, so 100 to 200 hobbyists gather annually to test their creations. Tripoli calls the event “a venue…

IT’S A RISKY WORLD, as we know, but all the more risky because some of the risks keep evolving. Ebola virus and the influenzas can adapt. ISIS can change tactics; Kim Jong Un can do turnarounds. And now experts warn that we have entered the “post- antibiotic era,” during which increasing numbers of people—in the hundreds of thousands—will suffer and die each year from infection by forms of bacteria that were once easily controlled with antibiotics. The World Health Organization considers antibiotic resistance one of the biggest threats of the 21st century. The World Economic Forum calls it a “potential disaster” for human health and the global economy. Just one such microbial threat, multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, caused more than 11,000 deaths in the United States in 2011 alone, and that…

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and developed for medical use in the early 1940s as a potent weapon against Staphylococcus of various sorts. But by 1955, penicillin- resistant strains of staph were turning up, especially in hospitals, from Sydney to Seattle. Methicillin, introduced in 1959, was especially useful against the penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. But by 1972 methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus had appeared in England, the United States, Poland, Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam. Vancomycin, introduced in 1972, was named for its capacity to vanquish even bugs that resisted earlier drugs. But by the late 1980s vancomycin resistance had shown up in Enterococcus bacteria in the form of a gene called vanA, and within another decade vanA had jumped sideways across genus boundaries from Enterococcus into staph, including Staphylococcus aureus. By 1996 there…