(Note: Rather than do something about the burgeoning number of bears and the disarming of farmers, The Nature Conservancy paints itself as the good guy in this tragedy. The real tragedy is that so few people understand the vast deception of this major global land baron -- which uses federal grants paid for by taxpayers to support its insatiable appetite to control the world's land, water and resources -- due to such language deception as this: "... working on a program to ease farmer anger over the growing numbers of black bears in Yunnan since laws were enacted to protect them in the late 1990s." The Nature Conservancy may well be the reason this farmer was mauled, due to its agenda of "protecting" large predators while disarming and draining the world's people of their property rights and other rights -- like the right to be responsible resource providers without having the very real -- and growing -- threat of being mauled or killed by such large predators. Consider the very real likelihood that all humans except those "chosen" to remain are targeted to become actual endangered species, before being made to go extinct. The Nature Conservancy is careful to keep its more blatant ties to "zero population growth" and other anti-human groups from being well known, but the ties exist, nonetheless. This ostensibly heroic surgery is nothing more than "damage control" at the "public awareness" level. It is Language Deception at its most cruel. This farmer may never have suffered such an attack if not for such "programs" to "ease farmer anger over the growing numbers of black bears" -- and all the farmer had with which to defend himself, was a stick.)

May 1, 2006

By Alexa Olesen aolesen@ap.org

Associated Press

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Beijing, China - The Chinese farmer who had a partial face transplant may need one or two more surgeries before his new face is complete, the surgeon who led the transplant said last week.

Doctors at the Xijing Hospital in central China had been practicing face transplant surgery on rabbits when they learned in February of a potential human candidate. Chinese environmentalists working in the remote mountains near Myanmar had discovered a farmer whose face was so disfigured by a bear attack that villagers shunned him.

On April 14, a team of 15 doctors and three nurses from the Xijing Hospital gave the farmer, Li Guoxing, a nose, upper lip, cheek and eyebrow from a brain-dead donor.

The hospital, run by the People's Liberation Army, said it was only the second time that the complex procedure had been attempted in the world.

Li "is chewing food by himself and taking three meals per day," Dr. Guo Shuzhong, director of the hospital's plastic surgery department, said in some of his first comments to foreign reporters since the 15-hour surgery. "He is pretty optimistic about the operation's result."

Li might still need one or two smaller surgeries before doctors can consider the transplant complete, Guo said, but he would not give details.

Half a year ago, doctors in Amiens, France, performed what was apparently the world's first partial face transplant, giving a donor's lips, chin and nose to a woman who had been attacked by a dog.

The poor farmer's journey from the remote mountains of Yunnan province to the operating table of an elite military hospital began in 2003 when he tried to use a stick to chase away a black bear attacking his cows and was himself brutally mauled, environmental activist Zhou Dequn said. The bear clawed at Li's face, tearing away much of his upper lip, nose and cheek.

Zhou is a Chinese representative for the Nature Conservancy, a U.S. environmental group, working on a program to ease farmer anger over the growing numbers of black bears in Yunnan since laws were enacted to protect them in the late 1990s. The bears kill and eat valuable livestock and destroy crops, farmers say.

"We hoped that we could help the wildlife in Yunnan but we realized it's also important to help the people there," Zhou told the Associated Press by telephone from Yunnan's capital, Kunming.

Through word of mouth and a loose network of environmentalists and researchers, Zhou heard that doctors at Xijing Hospital in central China's Xi'an city had announced success in performing a partial face transplant on a rabbit.

The Nature Conservancy contacted the hospital and told them about Li's condition.

With help from Zhou and his colleagues, Guo went to Yunnan in March, trekking two hours into the mountains to Ayuanluyi Village where Li and his family keep pigs, cows and sheep and grow corn and kidney beans.

Speaking through a translator -- Li speaks only the dialect of his Lisu ethnic minority group -- Guo examined his face and discussed the risks of the surgery with him, Zhou said. It was decided that Li would travel to Xi'an in March, and if a donor could be found, the surgery would be attempted.

Since Li, his wife and two children survive on about $37 a year, Zhou's group agreed to pay for his transportation and hotel costs until he got to Xi'an. The hospital agreed to do the operation without charge to Li, he said.

Following Li's encounter with the bear in 2003, he had been unable to find odd jobs because other villagers were afraid to look at him and would not hire him, Zhou said.

"His face was very frightening-looking," said Zhou. "It was like looking into a skull."

Doctors are waiting to see whether, over the next two months, Li's body rejects or accepts the donor tissue used to reconstruct his face, Guo said.

"So far, his condition is really good."

Copyright 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/health/14469116.htm

Additional information:

Zhou Dequn, "environmental activist" (Doctor of Philosophy degree from The University of Hong Kong in Ecology and Biodiversity), January 31, 2002. Source: http://www.hku.hk/eroesite/pdf/hku162_1_8.pdf Also: http://library.hku.hk/record=b2342487