Plastic Surgery Lottery Condemned By Surgeons and Healthcare Groups

By: Ruth Donnelly
Created on 27th June 2011

Mother, aesthetician and erotic novelist Sarah Burge has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently.

The self-dubbed "Human Barbie" first brought herself to the attention of the world's media when she revealed she had been injecting her 16 year old daughter, Hannah with Botox.

She followed this with the news that she was teaching her then six year old daughter, Poppy, to pole dance, then last week we heard that she had presented Poppy with a voucher redeemable against a boob job for her seventh birthday.

Having spent over £500,000 on procedures for herself, Ms Burge is no stranger to the surgeon's knife and now she has decided to get involved with a project to allow others to experience the life-changing effects of cosmetic surgery for themselves.

Teaming up with cosmetic surgery group Transpire, Sarah has launched a series of monthly events around the country, which she has creatively named "My Big Fat Plastic Surgery Prize Draw".

Launched last Friday at a nightclub in London, the event promises to mix "high class partying with attractive prizes from the world of Plastic Surgery". Tickets cost £25, and the top prize is £4,000 worth of cosmetic surgery, with runners up winning prizes including fillers, semi-permanent make-up and tooth whitening.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this latest move has provoked widespread antipathy from the cosmetic surgery industry. CosmeticSurgeryToday contacted the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons to find out their views on the subject:

"The offer of a cosmetic surgery procedure as a prize is an awful manifestation of the trivialisation of medical care in general, and aesthetic surgery in particular," said Mr Adam Searle, former president of the BAAPS. "Any patient making irreversible decisions in circumstances of hype, excitement and emotion, is putting themselves at very great risk."

Current BAAPS president Mr Fazel Fatah feels that the government should step in to prevent these events from continuing:

"I call upon the government to ban all advertising of cosmetic surgery and prohibit inducements and offers of any kind of surgery as a lottery prize," he told us. "I also call on the Care Quality Commission to review licensing of such facilities who are clearly abusing the trust of their patients by trivialising serious medical treatments that include life changing, major invasive surgery.  

"The General Medical Council should step in to protect patients and make it clear that they will review the license of any surgeon who becomes party to this abuse of trust by accepting to operate on patients who win such prizes or recruited with the inducement of cut price surgery or limited offers."

Until such measures are taken, however - and if the government's line on cosmetic procedures up to now is any indication, it might be best not to hold your breath - our advice is to steer clear of these events, do your research before booking any surgical or non-surgical procedure, and try not to be swayed by persuasive advertising campaigns.