OB's Are Dropping Babies For Botox

"You go to a medical aesthetics seminar, and you look around the room," McConnell said, "and the majority of the doctors are ob/gyns, and you wonder - who's going to deliver all the babies?"

An Alluring Business: Read the article.

In the past few years, the number of minimally invasive cosmetic procedures performed by doctors - from Botox to lasers - has exploded.

"It's a very lucrative area," said Dr. James M. Spencer, a professor of clinical dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine who practices at St. Anthony's Carillon Outpatient Center in St. Petersburg. "The baby boom generation is moving into their 50s and 60s. There's tremendous demand."

At the same time, doctors are squeezed by declining insurance payments and rising costs for malpractice, office space and other expenses.

"People want to go into cash-on-the-barrelhead business because the insurance companies are squeezing you harder and harder," said Dr. Daniel Greenwald, former chief of plastic surgery at Tampa General Hospital. "There's also something appealing about when a patient comes and says, "I choose you,' as opposed to you're in some book on some (insurance) plan somewhere."