For most of human history, we have used surgery to try to save lives and improve health. However, as our medical techniques and knowledge improved over the centuries, surgery became a means not just to cheat death, but also to repair congenital or acquired deformities such has cleft palate or clubfoot. Over the last 100 years, accompanying a general rise in levels of health and financial stability, people have begun using surgery to "fix" even their smallest facial and other irregularities or enhance the physical characteristics with which they were born. This modern use of surgery, known as surgical body sculpting, has become a multibillion-dollar industry. It has also raised many complex ethical questions.

Plastic versus Cosmetic Surgery

Over the last century or so, the field of plastic surgery has spawned a subdivision of itself known as cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgery is mainly concerned with...