The " Colour " Question !

Shreya  Siddanagowda was just eighteen when she had the misfortune to be a passenger in a bus crash on one of India's chaotic roads.  Her hands were crushed and because there was a delay in  extracting her from the wreck and getting her to hospital the surgeons had no other option that to amputate both arms below the elbows.

She was put on the waiting list for a transplant, but in India that is a slow process because Indian families are reluctant to donate limbs.  Barely a year later she was offered the option of replacements for both hands.  They matched her blood group, but they were far bigger than her originals - they were hairy and the colour was much deeper than her own body colour.  They were the hands of a man.

The donor was a man killed in a motorcycle accident who was pronounced brain dead on arrival at the hospital.  Shreya accepted instantly, and after a thirteen hour procedure they were successfully attached.  Now, two years after the operation her doctors are baffled.  Very quickly the donated hands began to show a lot of change.  They are now hairless and slender and appear to be changing to the body type of the now twenty-one year old student.

Even more remarkable is the colour change.  The much darker skin has lightened and the doctors are convinced that this is because of the actions of MSH - a brain controlled hormone that stimulates melanin production.  It seems to suggest that MSH influences the skin colour.

Obviously, this will attract the attention of many of the pharmaceutical companies scattered around the world.  MSH is barely understood but it offers a promising avenue of research which would bring a fortune to the company able to patent a product that changed skin colour.

That would certainly introduce social change of an overwhelming nature.  Our skin colour is something we are born with and which dictates many aspects of the life we will lead in most countries of the world.  The prospect that one day skin colour may be optional opens new avenues of challenge.

Perhaps the day when the colour of one's skin will be seen as a fashion statement !