As probably many of you reading this know, cosmetic treatments have increased its popularity through the past decades. The booming industry today, is having more troubled times than usual, since the existence of doubtful practices that have taken place massively. These cosmetic treatment practices have exploited, hazarded, and put innocent patients’ lives in danger, often being vulnerable as they seek these kinds of treatments for a better appearance.
Under these circumstances, people begin to wonder: what can we do about it? What can patients do about it? What can doctors do about it? What can government do about it? The answer to many of these questions is difficult to find, but as of the last question, government IS trying to do something about it. After the review that was headed by the NHS’s medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, it was said that Government in fact, has criticized the promotional tactics under this industry as aggressive. They have even mentioned that doctors are not the ones who publish or advise procedures, but salespeople, and that patients are generally abandoned after something in the procedure of their treatment went wrong.
Why did the industry go wrong? Well this is simply because suppliers stopped thinking about the job they were doing, and began focusing on the moneymaking side of it. The existing controls were really weak and didn’t work at all. They did almost nothing to prevent so-called “doctors” or better called “unqualified practitioners”, and to protect patients.
There has been strong support for giving an end to two-for-one offers and time-limited discount deals. For surgery, a two-stage process of written consent for avoiding the rush into going under the knife.
As Keogh said, there’s “a cacophony of concern across society”, and also that there’s “some pretty grubby practices going on”.
As we can conclude about the article, cosmetic surgeries has life-changing consequences, so it becomes extremely important for vulnerable people to not be victims of the aggressive marketing techniques, consciously focused on their market. They need to go deeper than just falling into marketing strategies, since clearly this specific industry’s ethics is hardly found today.
Source Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/cosmetic-surgery-likely-to-face-tough-regulation-after-review-2012-12#ixzz2IAfjBjbf
Hmmm this seems like a result of neglect; perhaps if more public attention was given to the field then a lot more safety regulations can be put into place to reduce poor practices.
The public might not have given enough attention to the field, perhaps if it was put under the spotlight more regulations would be enacted to prevent mal-practices.