Polish man gets face transplant after injury
WARSAW – A 33-year-old Polish man received a face transplant just three weeks after being disfigured in a workplace accident, in what his doctors said Wednesday is the fastest time frame to date for such an operation. It was Poland’s first face transplant.
Face transplants are extraordinarily complicated and relatively rare procedures that usually require extensive preparation of the recipient over a period of months or years. But medical officials said the Polish patient’s condition was deteriorating so rapidly that a transplant was seen as the only way to save his life. The patient is now being watched for any infections.
In a photo taken Tuesday, just six days after the surgery, the patient, identified only by his first name, Grzegorz, was shown giving a thumbs-up sign from his hospital bed.
He was injured in an April 23 accident at his job at a stone mason’s workshop near the southwestern city of Wroclaw when a machine used to cut stone tore off most of his face and crushed his upper jaw.
French universities may teach courses in English
PARIS – In France, there’s a brewing debate over whether to speak anglais in universite.
The National Assembly on Wednesday was taking up an education reform bill that would allow public universities to hold some courses – like science or economics classes – in English, a plan that has alarmed language purists and the political far-right alike.
President Francois Hollande’s Socialist-led government is pushing the idea to better prepare French students for the global job market and lure more foreign brains. But France’s complex history with Britain means perceived incursions of the language of Shakespeare often go down badly.
French law requires classes to be conducted in French, though a 1994 revision allows some non-Francophone foreign students and teachers to hold some classes in English. But Higher Education Minister Genevieve Fioraso says some schools, including the super-elite “Grandes Ecoles,” are flouting the law by holding hundreds of courses in English.
She says her “good sense” reform would expand access to English instruction for less well-off students, and help French schools catch up with other European universities where English already is broadly used – like in Sweden or Germany – and which are competing for minds from developing nations such as China, India and Brazil.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
