The Art of Cosmetic Surgery

Source: NY Times
LAST year Helena Rasin’s grandmother gave her $200 for Christmas. This year her grandmother gave her a new nose.

“A nose job is the best Christmas present ever because you’ll have it forever,” Ms. Rasin, 25, a drug company representative in Los Angeles, said two weeks ago while at home recuperating from her rhinoplasty. “It’s not like some sweater you don’t like and have to take back to the store. Even with the bandages still on, I can already tell I look cuter.”
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Source: CNN News
More than five years ago Katherine Dowling, from Manchester, England, was badly burnt in a house fire. A year ago, she discovered a procedure called Isolagen, which has healed the skin on her face. This is her story:
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Source: BBC 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.
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Source: BBC News
It has been technically possible to carry out such a transplant for some years, with teams in the US, the UK and France esearching the procedure. Skin from another person’s face is better for transplants as it will be a better match than skin from another part of the patient’s body, which could have a different texture or colour. But the ethical concerns of a face transplant, and the psychological impact to the patient of looking different has held teams back. Concerns relating to immunosuppression, psychological impact and the consequence of technical failure have so far prevented ethical approval of the procedure in the UK, though doctors here are fully able to perform transplants.

This is the first face transplant using skin from another person

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Source: BBC news
Scientists have discovered why it is often harder to keep weight off than to lose it in the first place. A team at New York’s Columbia University has shown the body’s internal systems act to restore fat levels in people who have slimmed down. The body appears to interpret the loss of weight as a deficiency in the appetite hormone leptin, and acts to try to restore the usual balance. The study features in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

We would predict that the human genome is heavily enriched with genes that defend body fatness
– Dr Michael Rosenbaum

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