HEALTH IN YO’ FACE: DUELING DOCS

You can put a pretty face on it if you want, but the squabble among Dallas plastic surgeons is still just a turf battle.

It started when the Dallas Society of Plastic Surgeons cranked up an ad campaign trumpeting the difference between board-certified plastic surgeons like themselves and every other Tom. Dick, and Hippocrates trying to cash in on the cosmetic surgery craze.

The promotion’s bedside manner was blunt. How blunt? Well, picture a photo of a Mr. Potato Head-like figure and the admonition, “Not Everyone Who Does Plastic Surgery Is A Plastic Surgeon.” A list of the thirty or so genuine DSPS members followed.

But not all the “real” plastic surgeons were pleased by the efforts on their behalf. Dr. Donald Klein was one of a handful of plastic surgeons to resign from the DSPS in protest over the campaign. Though he has advertised his own practice in the past, Klein believes the Mr. Potato Head ads misrepresented some doctors and pitted one group of peers against another. “It becomes a war, and that’s not my idea of practicing medicine,” says Klein. “I think economics enters into this more than some doctors might want to admit.”

DSPS President Dr. Robert Hamas says education is the only goal of the advertising program, which has been imitated by plastic surgeons in other states. His group plans to go ahead with it despite the com-plaints of the disaffiliated docs-some of whom, he points out, have advertised their own practices since.

“Any organization is going to have people who don’t want to go along,” says Hamas. “Some people don’t believe in mom and apple pie.”