Safety Lesson of the Day - Cosmetic Procedures

Just as a precaution, you may wish to avoid having unlicensed persons inject stuff into your @$$.

In case you’re asking yourself, “But why might I want to avoid having unlicensed persons inject stuff into my @$$? What could possibly go wrong?” you might want to check these bizarre reports from the CDC out of a facility in North Carolina.

From one of three cases, all of which are quite similar: “According to facility records, 300 mL of ‘dermal silicone/saline solution’ were injected into each buttock… The woman experienced headache and vomiting…and noted that her urine looked like purple blood. She went to an emergency department…and was found to be in acute renal failure.”

The CDC report notes that the person administering the shots was a radiology tech and yet “Signage and promotional materials available on the Internet and in facility A referred to the facility as a family medicine practice and used the name of a family medicine physician licensed in North Carolina. However, this physician had no recent affiliation with facility A and no involvement with the soft-tissue filler procedures.” The individual was eventually arrested and charged with practicing medicine without a license.

So, you know, get whatever you want injected into your butt, but you might want try to find out if the facility is a total fraud first. I’m going to personally just keep on avoiding shots in the butt as much as possible.

Full Service Gynecology!

I saw a bus bench ad this morning for a gentleman offering “Full Service Gynecology.” My own bus went by too quickly to read the name or the details of what “full service” includes exactly, but I’m not sure I want to know.

AT&T’s Advertising, Or, Too Much Time Writing About Vaginas

I giggled last night when I saw a new AT&T wireless ad. It features cell phones arising out of fleshy, expanding (largely pink) flowers. As I watched it, I thought: “Those flowers kind of look like vulvas. I mean, they’re obviously targeting women with the pink and all the flowers, but it’s like these flowers are opening up and giving birth to the phones.”

And then, the ad text.

“Happy Mother’s Day.”

Ah ha ha ha ha ha. Maybe their ad people just discovered Georgia O’Keefe.

My Beautiful Mommy - Kids’ Book on Plastic Surgery

“My Beautiful Mommy” is a book to explain plastic surgery to kids. And by “kids,” I mean it’s targeted at 4-7 year olds, because some plastic surgeon was worried that the little ones wouldn’t understand that mommy wasn’t really “hurt or sick” when she came home from the hospital with bandages and bruises after her boob job or tummy tuck.

Look, do whatever you want, but I have a problem with a plastic surgeon working to normalize these procedures for little kids and including a message of always striving to be “prettier” for girls who haven’t even hit puberty yet. As Newsweek indicates, the book:

“…features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: ‘You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn’t fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better.’

 

Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.. The book doesn’t explain exactly why the mother is redoing her nose post-pregnancy. Nonetheless, Mom reassures her little girl that the new nose won’t just look ‘different, my dear—prettier!’”

Argh. I’m not linking to the publisher for the book, but BoingBoing has an image of the cover. Apparently cosmetic surgery causes you to be surrounded by fairy dust and butterflies, and your kid will throw open her arms because she finally loves the new, not ugly you.

FDA Issues Warning Letters on STD “Treatments” Sold Online

From the FDA’s release: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued Warning Letters to six U.S. companies and one foreign individual for marketing unapproved and misbranded drugs over the Internet to U.S. consumers for the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).”

The products are sold as Tetrasil, Genisil, Aviralex, OXi-MED, Imulux, Beta-mannan, Micronutrient, Qina, and SlicPlus, and FDA is advising consumers to stop using them immediately. They are not FDA approved, and the agency has raised concerns about inadequate directions and false or misleading claims.

It’s interesting to me that the FDA’s warning letters to the companies, in listing the promotional claims about the product, mentions the metatags of the websites - for example, “These claims are supplemented by the metatags that you use to bring consumers to your website. The metatags include ‘herpes treatment,’ ‘herpes genital treatment,’ and ‘herpes simplex treatment.’” In other words, luring people to the website with keywords unsupported by the medical evidence may also be a form of false/misleading claim.

Update: JUnkfood Science has commentary on this as well.

The Hidden Effects of Domestic Violence

City of Hope, an organization in Dubai that provides refugee for battered women and children, has commissioned these domestic violence ads that highlight the hidden marks left by violent acts. The caption reads, for the bracelet, “He gave me this for our anniversary,” and “He gave me this for nothing at all,” for the fracture. They’re powerful ads - I only wish the text was more prominent. [Click on the image to view a larger version]

Found via StreetAnatomy, who has all three campaign images posted.

Related:
Interview with Sharla Musabih as she builds the City of Hope
‘Hope’ for Dubai’s abused women

Semi-Related: Why is it that PSAs and other ads for non-profits and general do-gooders always have too-small text? When I worked for a non-profit, I always took notice of highway billboards for such organizations, and one thing they nearly all had in common was text that was too small to properly convey they relevant message from a driving distance/speed. This applied even to the Ad Council pieces, and it’s not as though they’re inexperienced with this sort of thing.

Thoughts Related to the Nipple Project

In a previous post on the Nipple Project, I included the project leaders’ statement about the Victoria’s Secret IPEX bra, advertised as providing “maximum nipple coverage.” I have to say, the Secret seems obsessed with hiding the nips. I recently received a gift card to the store, and went in search of new bras. Now, I have, uh, a generous bosom, and finding bras that are sturdy, don’t dig in, and don’t look like psych ward restraints is no small challenge. Even more difficult, however, is finding a bra meeting those criteria, or even just one the right size, that doesn’t have padding - it’s damn near impossible. Personally, I’m not the least bit interested in adding more volume to my boobs, and I suspect many women at or above a C or D cup agree.

So I walk into the store, get measured, and clearly state, “I want a bra with no padding.” The sales vultures immediately launch into an educational presentation about why I should, in fact, want some padding, and the pitch focused on the dreaded visible nipple. “Look, I want as little padding as possible. I don’t need more boob.” And yet, they persisted. “Winter’s coming,” they said, “you’re going to want a little coverage.” If I cared about that, I probably wouldn’t have started out specifically asking to be steered to minimal addition. The experience was irritating enough (as are their salespeople generally) that I won’t likely go back unless I’m given another gift card (hey, I’m cheap, and free stuff is free stuff).

Why is the nipple so dreaded, anyway? We all have ‘em. Sometimes they show a little. Big whoop. It’s only embarrassing if we agree that it is. I just want a bra to comfortably support what I have, and I refuse to buy into the idea that what I really need is just a little more breast but absolutely no nipple, ever. It’s my body, and it is what it is. Now make me a decent bra, just the way I want it.

Bioidentical Hormones in Menopause?

Christine covers the controversy in recent post at OBOS.

Lipitor Ad Used Stunt Double?!?

You’ve probably seen by now the Lipitor commercials with the earnest older doctor guy who “dedicated” himself to the heart because of his father, and he takes the cholesterol drug, and rows and is fit, so it must work. Right? Not so much. This artificial heart inventor, Dr. Jarvik,was apparently paid $1.35 million to serve as a spokesperson, and used a stunt double in the rowing scenes (Health Care Renewal notes why this deception matters). Oh, and he’s not a cardiologist or even a practicing physician. A Congressional committee is now investigating the whole thing, looking into “false and misleading statements and the use of celebrity endorsements of prescription medications in direct-to-consumer advertising.”

Seriously. Don’t ever rely on advertising to give you accurate medical information or drug advice.

Super Bowl Ads 2008

This morning, I realized that what I *didn’t* see in the Super Bowl ads was interesting - I didn’t see your stereotypical light beer commercial with bikini-clad women enticing men to buy watered down mass-produced beer in order to hypothetically have a shot with them. Overall, there just wasn’t much “buy stuff=get boobs” among the ads.

Sure, there was a Victoria’s Secret spot, but they can hardly help it - they’re advertising products specifically for boobs. Carlos Mencia tried to help men pick up women in a bar, but it was more about the men being ineffectual at that task than boob-splotation (although it did its exploitation in the “dumb foreigner”/ethnic stereotype realm). I think Dell’s ad suggested that buying a Dell might attract hot women, but that spot was barely memorable. NOW has a different take on the ads, calling the Planters ad with the “unattractive” woman offensive, and noting the Danica Patrick bit from GoDaddy, generally complaining of “gratuitous violence, sexual exploitation and ethnic caricatures.”

Seriously, though? For such a riled-up sporting event, the ads were much less sexist and offensive than one might expect. In fact, the most memorable ads were for etrade (baby investor), Coca-Cola (Frist and Carville), the one with the oboe, the Clydesdale-in-training (Anheuser-Busch), and the Audi Godfather spoof. These were funny, at least a little clever, and didn’t manage to imply that drinking cheap beer would make you attractive to those with running over cups. They were, in my opinion, the best of the night, and none of them relied on the old bikini/beer technique. You can view all of the ads at Spotbowl.