August 17, 2009 | Mad Science
Professional bodybuilding magazines – you’ll find a stack the next time you’re in the recreation room of a maximum security prison – provide all sorts of tips on how to build up your physique so that trapezius muscles can jut out past the ears, conferring the unique aesthetic of looking like you’re wearing football equipment under your shirt.
Some of these tips, however, go beyond mere push-ups or exercising your calves by kicking sand in the face of a 90-pound weakling while his best girl looks on. Many pro bodybuilders – and even some amateur pretenders to bodybuilding’s sweaty throne – who feel that providence has short-changed them concerning a particular part of their physique, will opt for implants in the area of concern. Others who feel similarly slighted—say, breast size that isn’t close enough to resembling a regulation NBA basketball (side-note here: for breast size, unlike scholastic aptitude, an ‘A’ is considered inferior to a ‘D’) opt for silicon valleys.
Places like South Beach are home to more smiling artificial faces at risk of melting in the noonday sun than Madame Tussaud’s, and, not surprisingly, where such surgery is easily booked. As plastic surgery has taken off though, there are some very serious questions being raised about who is actually performing these—not so much, what kind of personality is performing them (we know this: vain, superficial, attracted to the field because it’s very lucrative) but what kind of training they actually have. 
A recent ABC article asked, “Can an eye doctor perform breast augmentation? Can a gynecologist perform liposuction?” If the answers to such questions is “Yes, if the price is right”, well, you’re not too far off base.
When a chef steps out of their comfort zone, you might get pasta primavera tinged with the flavors of south Vietnam, but when a medical practitioner does so, it’s understandably frightening. Apparently, The Arizona Medical Board has created guidelines for physicians who change their scope of practice, but before you applaud such a measure, they are not mandatory and “There is no competency test when a physician goes to change their scope of practice.” Check the American Board of Medical Specialties and most certainly talk to former patients who don’t look like they’d be cast in the next George Romero movie.
On a less life-altering note, an Albany, New York plastic surgery group was recently busted for using a bargain basement Botox substitute not approved by the FDA (the fact that the real botulinum toxin is approved, is weird but there are lots of medically-necessary procedures it’s used for—namely excessive underarm sweating and uncontrollable blinking).
Here’s an interesting press release from Health Canada for those interested in facial expressions that resemble American Gothic:
Health Canada is informing Canadians and Canadian health care professionals that the labeling information of BOTOX ® and BOTOX Cosmetic ® will now include the risk of the toxin spreading to other distant parts of the body. Possible symptoms of “distant toxin spread,” which can be fatal, include muscle weakness, swallowing difficulties, pneumonia, speech disorders and breathing problems.
