A blunt no-nonsense look at aesthetic medicine in UK

What is it about?

At the time of this writing in 2017, the General Medicine Council refuses to take responsibility for the safety of aesthetic medicine patients. Anyone can inject toxins and fillers here. Hairdressers take 6 hours of "training" and start offering non-surgical facelifts. It is chaotic. Government seeks VAT revenue so it wants to keep these procedures as commodities, not medical treatments. Lobbies of beauticians and hairdressers combined with biased aesthetic spa owners to create yet another company which they claim will make things safer. But as long as the Department of Health does call aesthetic medicine a medical speciality and bring its practice under the remit of GMC, it is doing a disservice to patients and doctors as a whole.

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Why is it important?

Most of what goes on in the medical aesthetic "industry" in the UK is behind a smokescreen of who makes the biggest noise clamouring about how they are the safest and the best. Lots of "reviews" and "white papers" have been commissioned, but nothing spells out the problem - their results have all been non-specific to say the least. The basic truth is that the British government and the Department of Health have ignored these medical treatments for too long, leaving them to be considered as commodities to get more VAT revenue into their coffers. This paper was written with no financial assistance, and from the frontline. It is a no-nonsense summary of what is going on here.

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