Chamblee54

It is perhaps the most famous photograph from the depression. The semi official title is Migrant Mother. The Library of Congress says “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.” The exact date is unknown, and was either February or March of 1936. The photographer was Dorothea Lange (pronounced dore-THEE-ah lang). The model was Florence Owens Thompson .
Ms. Lange was born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, N.J. When she was seven she had polio, and when she was twelve her father left. Both events affected her deeply. (Lange is her mother’s maiden name, chosen for use after the father left.) She became a photographer, and had a successful studio in San Francisco. By 1936 she was with her second husband, her sons were in boarding school, and she went to work for the Farm Security Administration.
The Farm Security Administration hired a number of photographers to document the lives of Americans between 1934 and 1944. (During part of this time, it was connected to the Office of War Information, and the Resettlement Administration.) Since they were working for the government, the photographers were not entitled to copyright protection. The majority of these pictures are in the public domain, including the famous pictures of Florence Thompson.
This feature started with a google search for the correct way to pronounce Dorothea Lange. (Readers of this blog have seen the fondness for Library of Congress historic pictures. Ms. Lange is one of their stars.) This search led to a teacher’s guide from Yale University. This guide is about Dorothea Lange and the Migrant Mother. It tells the story as well as PG could. Bless his pea picking heart.
The day that Dorothea Lange photographed what would become her most famous photograph, Migrant Mother, has been retold by Lange in numerous sources. She was on her way home from a trip documenting the living and working conditions of the migrants to California. She followed their schedules, getting up at sunup and working until sundown, which made for long, sixteen-hour days. She was tired, and she was ready to see her family.
With about seven hours of driving left ahead of her, she passed a homemade sign that said Pea Pickers’ Camp. She knew that a late frost had ruined the pea crop, and was concerned about the people who might be at the camp. It nagged at her to turn around, to go back and visit the camp, another opportunity to document. About 15 minutes (20 miles) later, Lange did turn around.
Right away she saw the woman who would be the subject of Migrant Mother. Some sources say she took 5 shots, but she really took 6; in any case each shot focuses in on the woman a little more, and the final shot is the one that would become the “timeless and universal symbol of suffering in the face of adversity “ (The Library of Congress only has five of the shots.)
Early the morning after she got home, instead of spending time with her family Lange rushed to develop the photographs and submit them to the FSA and The San Francisco News. She thought that these photographs could help bring attention to the plight of these American migrant farmers. She was right; the story was printed in newspapers around the country, and the federal government immediately sent 20,000 pounds of food…. (The Thompson family had left for Watsonville by the time the food arrived)
The Dust Bowl refugees were of European descent, and were migrating to California because they were displaced from their farmland by drought. Florence Owens Thompson, though from Oklahoma, was a full-blooded Native American, and her family had been displaced from tribal lands by the U.S. government. (By 1930, Native Americans had lost more than 80% of their lands this way).
The day Lange photographed Thompson, she and her family were driving towards Watsonville, hoping to pick lettuce in the Pajaro Valley. The timing chain on their car broke just outside Nipomo, and so they pulled into the pea -pickers camp to fix it. While fixing the chain, the radiator was punctured; Thompson’s two boys (and likely her male companion) (Wikipedia says it was husband Jim Hill) brought the radiator into town to be fixed. While they were gone, Lange arrived…
The choices Lange made in terms of shooting the scene are very telling in light of our discussion about documentary photography. Most strikingly, the woman’s teenaged daughter is purposefully excluded from the photograph. She appears in the first two photographs of the series, but Lange thought that including her would cause the viewer to speculate about how old the mother was when she began having children (Curtis p. 55). At the time, the ideal family contained no more than three children; this woman’s family of seven could have detracted from the matter at hand, and maybe caused people to feel less sympathetic towards her (Curtis p. 52).
In the third shot, all you see is the mother nursing her youngest child. Migrant Mother is often referred to as Migrant Madonna… Lange thought that her subject looked too anxious and uncomfortable with the camera, as Lange seemed to have triggered in her what she called “that self-protective thing” (Curtis p. 57). So, despite being uncomfortable with how unpredictable children were to photograph, to calm the mother she added one of the children back into the frame for the fourth shot. She had the child rest her chin on her mother’s shoulder, which, though somewhat unnatural, served the purpose of anchoring the child still. She was also asked to remove her hat, which would have obscured her facial features. This resulted in a good photograph. Lange “thought she could do better.”
The fifth shot was the same, but from a different angle, which illuminates an empty pie tin, heavily symbolic of the hunger the family was facing. It also highlighted a warm and loving relationship between mother and child, as the child is leaning lovingly on the mother’s shoulder, which is comforting to the child.
For the sixth and final shot, (the one which became famous) Lange brought another child in, but she had both children face away from the camera, so that her shot would not be jeopardized by their unpredictability, and they would serve as a loving frame for the mother. Lange asked the mother to bring her right hand up to her face, and that resulted in exactly what Lange wanted and knew was there (Curtis p. 65). It softened her anxiety about the camera into a mother’s concern for the welfare of her family. The mother was worried about letting her sleeping child slip, so in the original sixth shot you could see her thumb grasped around the pole for support. In her excitement Lange did not see it. She eventually altered the original photonegative because she “did not want a small detail to mar the accomplishment (of overcoming her subject’s defensiveness) (Curtis p. 67).”
In this feature, the second image from the session is missing. The pictures in this feature are as follows. 1- The famous picture, cropped. 2- The first shot from the session. 3- A detail from the first shot. 4- The Migrant Madonna. 5- Child on the shoulder. 6- Child on the shoulder #2. 7. The full length famous picture. 8- A portrait of Dorothea Lange. 9- Another photograph by Ms. Lange, taken on the California-Arizona border in the summer of 1936. 10- The information from the famous picture. 11- The famous picture with the thumb included.
2012 Repost Notes This was on a list of posts that could be repeated. Of course, there are usually improvements to be made. Youtube was searched, and some videos were found. One of them mispronounces Dorothea. A search for the correct pronunciation of that first name was how this post got started in 2010.
Looking at the pictures reveals a glitch in the famous picture. If you look in the part of her hair, you will see a gray stripe. This is a bit of damage to the negative, and is common to old photographs. Ordinarily, PG would paste over a spot like that, but this is a sacred photograph.
The files of the LOC were consulted, and a 115mg original was downloaded. The grey stripe was still in the part, which is where it will stay. The original has the thumb, which was taken out of the famous prints. It is included in this post, along with the information typed into the side.
A look at some of the other pictures taken that day show a grey spot in the part. Maybe it wasn’t a photo glitch. Raising seven children can give any woman a few gray hairs.
Another question is about Florence Thompson, the “Migrant Mother”. It was noted that she was a Native American. PG has decided that the expression “Native American” is the invention of European Import Americans, and is only marginally less offensive than Indian. There are hundreds of tribes in the Americas. A person is a member of a tribal nation. What tribe was Florence Thompson?
Mr. Google points us to this answer. “Thompson, a “full-blooded” Cherokee, was born Florence Leona Christie on September 1, 1903, on the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Her father, Jackson Christie, was an ex-convict who had abandoned the family before her birth. Her mother, Mary Jane Cobb, married Charles Akman, a Choctaw, in 1905, with whom she raised Thompson near Tahlequah OK”
At the start of World War II, Dorothea Lange went to a Japanese internment camp, . The experience nearly destroyed her. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

Outside Looking In is a 2019 novel by T.Coraghessan Boyle, usually known as TC. It is the story of Fitz Loney, a grad student at Harvard in 1962. He, and his wife Joanie, start attending “sessions” conducted by Tim Leary. The psycho-experimentation always has ups and downs. Soon, the Loneys, and their son Corey, spend an idyllic summer in Mexico, before moving back to cold Boston. Around this time, Dr. Leary finagles an estate in upstate New York. The Loneys move in.
In all Boyle novels about, the whole thing turns to shit. At the end of OLI, the Loneys are essentially separated, and Fitz has made a mess of his life. Since Fitz is a fictional character, we have no way of knowing what happened.
The story is fun to read. Boyle is a master storyteller. Detail is pinned onto de-donkey. After about 250 pages, all you want to do is read more … even knowing that it would be over all too soon. If you apply your logical mind, you might find a few plot inconsistencies. That is for scholars and critics. If you just want to be entertained, OLI more than fills the bill.
OLI was the transition book for me during cataract surgery. When I got it from the library, I had scheduled the procedure. The first part, I read with the old eyes and glasses. Then, the right eye was de-cataracted. For an agonizing week, there was one renovated eye, with various levels of reading glasses. First, the left eye lens was covered with tape, then just ignored. It was with relief that the left eye was re-done, to match the right.
Finding the best reading glasses is a work in progress. Usually, 1.5x is a good fit, except for sitting at a table, where 2.5x seem to be best. There is work to be done here. You can make a lot of mistakes at the dollar store. The arrival of two matching eyes came at about the time when OLI started to catch fire.
Towards the end of OLI, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters came to call on Tim. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the bus goes to Millbrook, and finds out that Tim is on an important trip, and cannot be disturbed. That is more or less what happens in OLI, except some of the other players enjoy the Pranksters. A few pages before this, someone is talking about a new novel by Ken Kesey. Very few other novelists are mentioned in OLI. It seems a bit odd that the Leary devotees would be talking about Ken Kesey. This is one of the head scratchers in the plot.
The Library of Congress supplied the historic pictures that illustrate today’s book report.

Bloggingheads.tv released another chat featuring Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. With election days 35 days away, there was lots of talk about Donald and Hillary. It only took 1:44, in episode 44020, to learn what is expected. The assignment is to call DJT a racist, and lament what a terrible thing that is. This is what passes for political discourse in 2016.
At 3:28, there was an aha moment. The line was that DJT, instead of an orange haired ogre, was really just a seventh grade bully. When PG was in seventh grade, there was a mean person who gave him problems. This individual is now a facebook friend, and regularly posts memes supporting DJT. PG likes to know what the “other side” thinks. Ignoring the memes is always an option.
At 9:22, the importance of identifying racism in others is stressed. This is said to totally justify the appeal of DJT. Once you call someone a racist, you no longer have to work to understand their motives. When the scarlet R is super glued to somebody, that is all you need to know.
The Scarlet Letter is the rip roaring tale of Hester Prynne. She got caught fooling around, and had the scarlet A, for adultery, pinned to her chest. It was pinned to her chest, and she could see who did the pinning. In today’s “woke” world, the scarlet R, for racist, is super glued to the back of the terrible person. The person never knows who gave them this dreaded, irrevocable, label.
At 21:28, John tells an amusing story. He was talking to a well meaning white woman, said to be helpful in selling more books. At some point, the woman felt obligated to say that “we don’t like to talk about race.” John was too polite to laugh in her face.
The truth is, of course, that talking about race is the new national pastime. Does anyone listen? In all that talk, is anything worthwhile said? These questions are considered rude, and probably racist.
At 31:09, John said the n word. It is not known whether it ended with -er, or with -a. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

PG had heard the phrase “white privilege” a few times, and decided to ask Mr.Google about it. The top choice was White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. “This article is now considered a ‘classic’ by anti-racist educators.” It is four pages long, which might not break the attention span.
A document like this is almost impossible to read with an open mind. You are a member of a group, such as a white male like PG. There are a lot of things here which PG agrees with, a few his disagrees with, and a few that are dependent on the reader’s point of view. The sentence that PG felt obliged to copy was ” I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes”. It is as if the attitudes of black people did not matter.
There are more headshakers in this article. In a list of privileges white folks take for granted, number 18 was ” I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.”. That might have true once, but is not today.
Getting back to White Privilege (and ignoring the White Privilege Conference results), there are lots of people thinking about this subject. The University of Dayton contributes Defining “White Privilege”. In the text, the author mentions starting a site, Whiteprivilege.com. This site is currently under construction. It does give you the opportunity to buy “Privilege Car Insurance”.
A feature, What is white privilege?, compares every person with pale skin to the Palin family. “White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.” This runs counter to line 21 of the Invisible Knapsack list, ” I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. “
PG went looking for answers, and got more questions. He does not deny that being caucasian has advantages in our society. These advantages do not mean that one should lay down quietly and let black people get their revenge. We are all G-d’s children. You should be proud of who you are, without taking advantage of your neighbor.

After publishing a feature about white privilege , PG thought it would be fair to look into black privilege. When you visit Mr. Google, some of his suggestions are black privilege checklist, black privilege furniture, and black privilege fact or fiction. The top result is a feature in American Thinker. “Personally, I have never had a moment of white guilt in my life. Now this is a significant statement given that I am Jewish and from New York. I feel guilty about pretty much everything!”.
NPR has an audio file called Black Male Privilege? . It is downright fascinating.
Prof. LEWIS: I think youve unfortunately identified one of the central issues of black male privilege. So often, black men are used to being under attacked that when it comes to being accountable for the actions we may have, we quickly say, well, I couldnt possibly be doing anything wrong. Look at all the ways in which Im oppressed. Look at all the ways in which Im at the bottom of the barrel. What that does is rob us of an opportunity to actually build stronger community and it robs black men of a chance to actually take hold of the actions that they have so that we can empower the community.
MARTIN: What reaction do you get when you talk to people about this?
Prof. LEWIS: Among black women, in particular, I get a lot of amens and saying, thank for actually exposing this. Among black men, one of the most common ones I get is, well, this seems ridiculous. Its an oxymoron. How could black men be privileged? Its like jumbo shrimp. It doesnt add up. … And they say, you know, what did my black male privilege get me? Im unemployed. … : Initially, my first exposure was actually around the Million Man March. I felt that I was transformed by the Million Man March, and I thought it was one of the most powerful events ever. And I was having a conversation in class with a professor, Dr. Beverly Guy Sheftall, and she said that she couldnt support the Million Man March because it was very patriarchal and it put black men at the center. And I said, well, it doesnt always have to patriarchal. You dont always have to put black men at the center. And if she said, isnt it an amazing privilege to tell someone else what they dont have to take seriously? And that paused me for a moment. And I said, wow. What is it in my past that makes me say I can define what someone else would think of as important? (Here are more thoughts on this subject by Dr. L’Heureux Dumi Lewis )
Times are tough in the US of A. To an unemployed white person it is easy to say, what good has this privilege done me? And isn’t it a form of privilege to label anything you don’t like about someone as being due to privilege? Has privilege become a catch22 for anything you don’t like about a person?
This feature is not a complete recap of the google results for black privilege. There were a couple of white racist sites that are best ignored. Two wrongs do not make a right. This is a double repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is written like H. P. Lovecraft.

There is a lot of chatter about privilege these days. Where people used to talk about racism, today the buzzword is privilege. Chamblee54 has tried to contribute to the dialog (polylog) with recent posts about black privilege and white privilege. This is a repost.
One day recently, PG was exercising his vehicular privilege. The thought occured to him about another form of privilege. This privilege is stronger than race based privilege. In fact, many of the people, who whine about white privilege, benefit from this privilege. The president of privilege in America is Christian Privilege. (CP)
If you ask Mr. Google about CP, you get 3.6 million results. The first few give us plenty of text for this feature. A report about CP from About.com Agnosticism / Atheism has the traditional list of examples. The last few paragraphs tell more about the story.
A nonconscious ideology is analogous to the water fish swim in: fish don’t think of the water as wet because this environment is all they know — it structures their experience of life itself. Water simply is. Members of privileged groups don’t have to think about their environment because, for them, that environment simply is. They don’t have to be concerned about others’ opinions because it’s safe to assume that most think like them.
Those who don’t benefit from such an environment do have to think about it all the time because they are so susceptible to being harmed by it. For members of less privileged groups, what others think matters a great deal because their opinions and actions control access to the larger benefits of society. Fish don’t have to think about the water; mammals must remain conscious of it at all times lest they drown.
In most of the examples here, we can replace Christian/religion with male/gender or white/race and come up with the same results: examples of how our social, political, and cultural environment reinforce the dominance of one group over others. Male privilege and white privilege are closely related to Christian privilege because they have all been undermined by modernity and have all become part of America’s Culture Wars.
Christians realize that many of the above privileges are in decline. They interpret this as persecution because privilege is all they have ever known. The same is true when men complain about the decline of male privilege and whites complain about the decline of white privilege. The defense of privilege is a defense of dominance and discrimination, but for those who benefit it’s a defense of their traditional way of life. They need to become conscious of their privileges and realize that in a free society, such privileges are inappropriate.
A blog called Shakesville weighs in with On “Real” Christians and Christian Privilege . It tells the story of being asked not to identify Ann Coulter as a Christian. PG totally understands being embarassed by Ms. Coulter. There was a radio show once, with Ann Coulter promoting a book and PG listening. Some famous person was mentioned, and Ms. Coulter started to make jokes about what would happen to this famous person when he died. The line was that when he gets to heaven, he is going to wish he had been a Christian. This assumption that your ideas about life after death are correct, and universally practiced, is one especially vile example of CP.
The feature at Shakesville (which is easier to pronounce than Shakespearessister) is about how many people deflect complaints about bad behavior by saying “He is not really a Christian”. This is unsatisfactory on a number of levels. Many of the “good” Christians support “bad” Christians in their evil work. This excuse is one reason why PG prefers to say Jesus Worshiper to describe the members of this tribe. Shakes addresses this issue: “Frankly, it’s hurtful to me when Christians address what happened to me by saying, “Those aren’t real Christians,” expecting me to salve their discomfort about the baggage of privilege by not disagreeing. People who would never in a million years think to try to console a victim of a hate crime with “All [white/straight/cis/abled] people aren’t like that!” nonetheless responded that way to me when I was targeted and threatened by droves of self-identified Christians.”
Shakes is a good writer. She says things much better than this slack blogger. Maybe we should just let her explain a few things.
Christianity has a 2,000-year history that has seen countless iterations of the religion based on countless interpretation of the text and shaped to fit countless times and spaces and needs in disparate cultures all around the world. Christians have done great things, and not-so-great things—and anyone who makes the personal choice to carry the Christian mantle associates themselves with a history that includes all the good stuff and all the shitty stuff, too. One can’t say, “I only associate with the good Christianity—not the inquisitions and the genocides and the warmongering and the colonialism and the institutional misogyny … racism, antisemitism …”
That’s all part of Christianity’s legacy, too—and it just isn’t intellectually honest to say, “Well, those weren’t real Christians.” Yes, they were. And so are the Christians who do shitty stuff today. They might not be the same kind of Christian as you are, but they are nonetheless Christians.
Christianity, at least (and especially) in America, is a privilege—and, like any privilege, it can be uncomfortable to face the ugly reality of what other members of a privileged class can do to non-privileged folks, even if you don’t do it yourself. I’m white, I’m straight, I’m cisgender: I understand the impulse to distance oneself. But as a white person, I am obliged to acknowledge that the history of white supremacy in America is one of slavery, of lynchings, of segregation, of sundown towns, of internment camps, of genocide, and of all manner of institutionalized racism. I don’t get to say (nor do I want to) that the KKK aren’t “real” white people. They sure as hell are.
That Christianity is a chosen privilege does not mean its members can claim a lower standard of rigorous self-examination. And it doesn’t mean that less privileged Christians, i.e. progressive Christians, can claim a lower standard, either, just because the more privileged Christians marginalize them. Poor whites don’t get to disclaim their white privilege just because they are further marginalized by their lack of wealth.
In fact, chosen privileges demand, if anything, a higher standard of self-examination, because one has a choice whether to participate in the privilege. But so often, the fact that Christianity is a choice is instead used to deny the effects of that privilege altogether—”I’m not one of those Christians; I’m one of the good ones!”

October 16 is Oscar Wilde’s birthday. On that day in 1854, he appeared in Dublin, Ireland. He is one of the most widely quoted people in the english language. Some of those quotes are real. Since he was a published author, it should be easy to verify what he really said. This birthday celebration is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
One night in 1974, PG was talking to someone, and did not know who Oscar Wilde was. The conversational partner was horrified. PG became educated, and learned about a misunderstanding with the Marquess of Queensberry. Soon the “Avenge Oscar Wilde” signs made sense.
Mr. Wilde once made a speaking tour in the United States. One afternoon, in Washington D.C., the playwright met Walt Whitman. Thee and thou reportedly did the “Wilde thing”.
The tour then went to Georgia. A young black man had been hired as a valet for Mr. Wilde on this tour. On the train ride from Atlanta to Augusta, some people told Mr. Wilde that he could not ride in the same car as the valet. This was very confusing.
After his various legal difficulties, Oscar Wilde moved to Paris. He took ill, while staying in a tacky hotel. He looked up, and said “either that wallpaper goes, or I do”. Soon, Oscar Wilde passed away.

@jimgoad “I had an aneurysm before finishing the headline.” The headline in question is Doctors seek approval to transplant dead man’s sex organs onto trans-identified woman, appearing in The Christian Post. The story is tacky yellow journalism. A major source appears to be Jennifer Bilek, who has created a cottage industry out of badmouthing trans people. A comment typifies the approach here: “Frankenstein. And not much different than attaching the dead religion of the Torah/Talmud onto the living word of the New Testament.” This is a repost.
“Penis transplant performed on soldier at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore considered a success” The procedure has been performed, although not on ftm trans. “… a complex genital transplant on a soldier who also lost his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan, the man says he has normal functions and is “feeling whole.” The man … received a donated penis, scrotum and part of an abdominal wall during a 14-hour surgery in April 2018. … the man has “near-normal erections and the ability to achieve orgasm,” and can urinate “while standing, without straining, frequency, or urgency, with the urine discharged in a strong stream.” … Hopkins covered the $300,000 to $400,000 cost of the procedure and doctors donated their time. The hospital approved up to 60 more such procedures for service members, though not for transgender individuals or those born with defects.”
The CP article linked to a more serious medical magazine, Hospital Debates Penis Transplant in Transgender Patient. This article had some solid information, and will be quoted in the next few paragraphs. This article got a comment: “This is such a long article, that I feel comments probably are needed to be made, but I can think of nothing to say.”
“The main objectives of penis transplants are to provide an aesthetic phallus, urinary function, and sexual function (including erections and “erogenous sensitivity”) … While outcomes remain unknown, the prospect of penis transplants in transgender men is “huge” … phalloplasties – in which phalluses are constructed from flaps of skin – have complication rates of 80% to 90%, and that’s not the only limitation. … phalloplasties “don’t have the same aesthetic appeal [as natural penises] and they don’t enlarge and get hard on their own. They’re always the same size.”
“Metoidioplasties (met-oh-id-ee-oh-plas-tees) are another option for transgender men, but they also have limitations. In these procedures, surgeons form neophalluses out of clitoral tissue. The phalluses are disappointingly small … “You do have an erection and it can stay hard. Some people are capable of penetrating a partner, and some are not.”
“Compared to these existing options, a penis transplant ideally will offer “fewer urethral complications, better cosmetic outcome, and better physiological sexual capacity.” Still, limitations include the fact that transgender men who receive penis transplants will not be able to ejaculate since they lack a male reproductive system. It’s also not known if they’ll be able to have erections. For now, … the plan is to see if physical stimulation of the transplanted penis will engorge the clitoris enough to trigger blood flow to the corpus cavernosa in the penis – an erection.”
“Not surprisingly, penis transplants in transgender men will be more challenging than in cisgender men. In addition to connecting nerves and blood vessels, … patients will need urethra lengthening, as in phalloplasties, so the transplanted penis can urinate. However, … “the beauty of taking transplanted tissue is you can take as much tissue as you want. You can take the extra length of the donor’s urethra so you wouldn’t have to do the lengthening procedure.”
“Penis transplants in transgender individuals raise many other questions. Will scrotums also be transplanted, as was done in the Johns Hopkins transplant? What about testicles, which could produce sperm and – conceivably – offspring of the original donor? Testicles were not transplanted in the soldier … at Johns Hopkins for this reason … “Then the offspring is technically whose child?”
“VCA transplants (vascularized composite allotransplantation) in general are a controversial topic among bioethicists, especially in light of their high cost, high risk, and need for lifetime immunosuppression. “Unlike most solid organ transplants which are typically lifesaving, the goal of VCA is to improve quality of life. One of the challenges in VCA is that the [bioethics] field is still determining how to define and evaluate quality of life.”
“One critic questions whether penis transplants should be performed at all. They raise “ethical questions concerning aesthetics, morbidity, function, and cost-burden given the more readily available and less morbid alternative of phalloplasty” … The cost of a penis transplant in a transgender patient would likely be covered by research grant funds. … The transplant at Johns Hopkins cost a reported $300,000-$400,000, all covered by the institution.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Here is another look at ethical issues.