Letter: Vocal support

In her report on voice transplants, Lyndsay Buckland (20 June) speculates on how a recipient would sound after such an operation.

Current technology involves the implant of a small silicon valve or prosthesis about the size of a pinkie nail which connects the trachaea (wind pipe) and oesophagus (gullet) rather like the crossbar of a capital "H".

Through this, thanks to the skill and patience of speech and language therapists and hours of practice, the patient pushes air through the valve and sound is achieved.

What one does with that sound, as with normal speech, depends on one's lips, teeth, tongue and the resonating chambers in the head and chest.

With a voice transplant, the recipient will sound like himself or herself because there is no change in personality, or alteration in the influence of environment, local patois, regional dialect or national accent on pronunciation. An East Ender recipient from an Old Etonian donor would not sound "posh".

But there is a distinct bonus. The deeper timbre led one of my lady parishioners at St Mary's Haddington, to confess: "It's still you, Clifford, but your new voice is really rather sexy!"

(Rev) Clifford Hughes

Rumbling Bridge

Kinross