Plastic surgery ‘is trivialised’
3/17/2005 BBC World News The obsession with cosmetic surgery is obscuring the real work plastic surgeons do treating cancer patients and burn victims, leading doctors say. They said the demand for cosmetic surgery fuelled by the media's coverage of celebrities and TV programmes was having a negative effect. The British Association of Plastic Surgeons even said some people saw them in a similar vein as hairdressers. Instead, the surgeons said they were doctors who were there to heal people. To stress their point, they gave examples at a London press briefing of people who had benefited from their work. In one case, a club bouncer who had had his nose cut off in a sword attack was given a new nose through nasal reconstruction. Understanding A man who developed tongue cancer had part of his tongue removed and rebuilt, hardly impairing his speech. And two children, born with cleft palates, were almost indistinguishable from their peers by the age of two. Association chairman Chris Khoo said: "One of the things that comes across in the TV programmes is that there is a quick fix for anything, but sometimes we have to say no to treatment and people don't understand. "This obsession tends to trivialise what the speciality can do. "Our members treat cancer patients, burn victims and babies with cleft palates. They enable people to live full and active lives, but this does not always come across. " "We are not saying cosmetic surgery is not important, because it is [...]