6 Letters to Cosmetic Medicine.

letters_to_the_editor.jpgThe NY Times has published 6 letters to the editor

that they received after printing “More doctors turning to the business of beauty.” (front page, Nov. 30)

Among the letters:

"Physicians who take short courses to learn these procedures are abusing their medical licenses for the simple purpose of generating income. This is hypocritical medicine, not Hippocratic medicine."

Arthur W. Perry, M.D.
A clinical associate professor of plastic surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, was a member of New Jersey’s State Board of Medical Examiners from 1995 to 2005.

"I’m disgusted. We train our best students to be doctors, and look what we get: a bunch of spoiled doctors squabbling over cosmetic surgery like kids over the last cookie."

Christine R. Fry

Of course there are numerous reasons for physicians leaving the existing third party payer system to breach the cosmetic medical market, but the anger from both patients being left and existing cosmetic practices is very real.