Cleveland Clinic will host in the next few weeks several unusual interviews: five men and seven women will secretly visit the Cleveland Clinic to interview for the chance to have a radical operation that has never been tried anywhere in the world.

They will be submitted to some physical and pshicological exams, for Dr. Semionow to choose the one person who is most suited for the radical change. Because whomever she chooses will endure the ultimate identity crisis, as Dr. Siemionow wants to attempt a face transplant.

And her reason for doing this is to give people horribly disfigured by burns, accidents or other tragedies a chance at a new life. Today's best treatments still leave many of them with scar-tissue masks that don't look or move like natural skin.

These people have lost the sense of identity that is linked to the face; the transplant is merely "taking a skin envelope" and slipping their identity inside, Dr. Siemionow argues.