The French surgical team that carried out the world's first face transplant amid a storm of controversy, has apparently already selected a potential recipient for a second operation.
The second transplant will be carried out on a 23-year-old man who was disfigured as a child.
Surgeon Bernard Devauchelle carried out the partial face transplant two weeks ago on a woman whose lips, nose and chin had been torn off by a dog.
He is eager to perform the same surgery on the man who was mutilated as a toddler in a fireworks accident.
Apparently Devauchelle has plans to present the proposal to the authorities regardless of whether or not last month's operation on Isabelle Dinoire, who was given the lips, nose and chin of a woman donor, is successful.
It is reported that Dinoire, 38, from the northern French town of Valenciennes, is doing well, although she reportedly complained to doctors that she found her new nose “wider” than the one destroyed by her labrador as she lay unconscious in May after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
Photographs of Dinoire published last week showed only a faint scar on her face, but doctors say it could be months before she gains any sensation in the tissue and the danger of rejection will remain for the rest of her life.
The 15-hour operation by Devauchelle and Jean-Michel Dubernard, a surgeon famed for performing the world's first hand transplant, involved hospitals in Lille, Amiens and Lyon, where Dinoire was convalescing last week.
The operation has generated a global debate about the ethics of such transplants.
According to the french press, Dubernard, a colourful character known to his friends as "Max", has used the operating theatre as a springboard to a political career: he has apparently long harboured ambitions to become Lyon's mayor.