Plastic Surgery
Plastic Surgery
A notable proportion of society has become grossly fixated on plastic surgery, with people attempting to buy back their youth, or to buy a similar face/body to that of their superstar idol. Surgeons are cashing in on people’s insecurities, using the knife as a magic wand for superficial happiness. With an increase in the number of deaths attributed to plastic surgery, and a massive rise in Botox addiction, unnecessarily altering ones appearance on the operating table is a contentious topic of moral debate.
Recently, media attention has been focused on certain types of cosmetic surgery that are rapidly increasing among adolescent females in the United States. This trend raises disturbing ethical issues for the surgeons faced with young, impressionable patients.
Although surgery to reshape the nose is still the most frequent, other procedures have increased rapidly since 1992. These include breast augmentation, collagen injection, eyelid surgery, liposuction, and "tummy tuck." Most surgeons agree that procedures such as nose reshaping or pinning the ears back are appropriate for adolescents with awkward features. In contrast, the other procedures mentioned above are substantially more controversial in the medical community when the surgery is contemplated by teenagers.
Decisional capacity of the minor and avoidance of coercion are at least two general categories of ethical issues in this controversy that must be confronted by both physicians and patients. First, minors are not generally considered ready to make such decisions either by social convention or law. (Occasional exceptions have been recognized--for example, terminally ill children for whom conventional treatments have failed are sometimes permitted to refuse further burdensome treatment.) Also crucial is the tremendous influence that social pressure from the advertising and entertainment media can have on susceptible young persons. This is not to say that all adolescents lack decisional
A notable proportion of society has become grossly fixated on plastic surgery, with people attempting to buy back their youth, or to buy a similar face/body to that of their superstar idol. Surgeons are cashing in on people’s insecurities, using the knife as a magic wand for superficial happiness. With an increase in the number of deaths attributed to plastic surgery, and a massive rise in Botox addiction, unnecessarily altering ones appearance on the operating table is a contentious topic of moral debate.
Recently, media attention has been focused on certain types of cosmetic surgery that are rapidly increasing among adolescent females in the United States. This trend raises disturbing ethical issues for the surgeons faced with young, impressionable patients.
Although surgery to reshape the nose is still the most frequent, other procedures have increased rapidly since 1992. These include breast augmentation, collagen injection, eyelid surgery, liposuction, and "tummy tuck." Most surgeons agree that procedures such as nose reshaping or pinning the ears back are appropriate for adolescents with awkward features. In contrast, the other procedures mentioned above are substantially more controversial in the medical community when the surgery is contemplated by teenagers.
Decisional capacity of the minor and avoidance of coercion are at least two general categories of ethical issues in this controversy that must be confronted by both physicians and patients. First, minors are not generally considered ready to make such decisions either by social convention or law. (Occasional exceptions have been recognized--for example, terminally ill children for whom conventional treatments have failed are sometimes permitted to refuse further burdensome treatment.) Also crucial is the tremendous influence that social pressure from the advertising and entertainment media can have on susceptible young persons. This is not to say that all adolescents lack decisional