Cosmetic Surgery

Abstract

The rapid expansion of medical knowledge and biotechnology in recent decades has fostered utopian hopes for medicine. No longer are our hopes limited to the wish that chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure will soon go the way of polio and smallpox. Advances in areas such as genetics, neuroscience, psychopharmacology, and stem cell science foster the dream that in the not too distant future medicine will put us in command of our biological processes, psycho logical states, even our physical appearance. For the immediate present, medicine’s ability to deliver on this promise remains largely unrealized. But that is changing. With each passing decade, medicine has more and more to offer in the way of physiological improvements, techniques and procedures such as organ transplants that extend the previous limits of human health and function. Medicine’s stable of aesthetic enhancements such as Botox injections and liposuction continues to grow and with it the power to reshape the appearance of the human face and body and forestall physical signs of aging. The pressure for medicine to deliver such enhancements – to move beyond treating sickness and disease to a control of entire biological processes, including, perhaps, mortality itself – will only expand as techniques improve.