Pain but no gain in fake beauty treatments
Print Edition
A TV program has warned of pain but no gain if people opt for plastic surgery, a sector that has sparked up to 20,000 complaints a year between 2000 and 2010 and now finds itself at the center of a fake product scandal.
China Central Television’s Weekly Quality Report yesterday cited the case of a private clinic in Beijing suspected of using banned beauty products in a facial procedure that went badly wrong.
The victim, a Miss Gao, said she went to the clinic two years ago for an injection of hyaluronic acid, a natural filler used to reduce her wrinkles. But instead of getting better skin, she suffered a swollen face, a crooked jaw and a big lump on her forehead.
Dr Wu Yanqiu, a Beijing burns and plastic surgery specialist, said that as the filler was still causing complications it could be concluded she had been given a shot of a synthetic product, hydrophilic polyacrylamide gel, which has been banned in China since 2006.
The program heard that the gel accounted for 75 percent of all plastic surgery complaints.
Despite the State Food and Drug Administration ban, there’s a thriving underground market for the gel.
A recent raid of a beauty company in the eastern city of Ningbo revealed the extent of the trade.
It was engaged in selling “smuggled” hyaluronic acid and well as Type A creotoxin, which also aims to smoothen the skin. But the products were later identified by police as counterfeits produced locally.
According to a supplier to the company surnamed Li, the Type A creotoxin he sold at 300 yuan (US$48) a shot could eventually cost consumers between 2,000 and 10,000 yuan.
“During the investigation, we found that local beauty fairs were platforms for manufacturers and sellers to trade in fake products,” said Li Xiaoming, a police spokesman in Ningbo.
Beijing and Hebei and Shandong provinces are the biggest manufacturers of counterfeits for plastic surgery, the program found.
Hao Ping, head of a Beijing law firm, said consumers should take pictures of themselves before and after any surgery as evidence in the case of a dispute.
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