Pursuit of beauty requires homework

The pursuit of beauty can have beastly consequences for consumers who don't do their homework. Dr. Alastair Carruthers, cosmetic dermasurgeon and president of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, has had patients arrive in his Vancouver office after a range of botched treatments, from the victim of an incompetent laser treatment who ended up with zebra-like stripes, to another who lost one lower eyelid and partially lost the other. Considering some of the other horror stories, they were the fortunate ones. There are the four people in Florida who landed up in hospital, paralysed and on respirators after being injected with an unapproved botulism toxin more than 200 times stronger than the Botox injections used to smooth out wrinkles. The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery has issued a warning to consumers after reports of pain and disfigurement from procedures being performed by unlicensed practitioners and the tragic case of a woman who died after being injected with cooking oil in a California beauty salon.