Our main story tonight concerns beauty. It's the reason why earlier today I asked my makeup team to give me the works. To which they said, and I quote, "If you think we don't already go all out every week to make you appear at least 75% alive, you are genuinely too stupid to host this show.
" Beauty is something that many strive for, and some are willing to go to incredible lengths like this. I got salmon sperm facial with salmon sperm injected into my face. Kim Kardashian admits to trying a fishy new beauty treatment, the Jennifer Anderson approved salmon sperm facial.
The procedure is said to be a natural way to achieve a baby face with Botox-like effects. As for the price, this procedure cost 800 bucks and maintenance treatments are recommended every four to 6 months. Look, if staying young and beautiful requires $800 quarterly injections of salmon to the face, then count me out.
I'd much rather age the way that I talk at exactly one and a half speed. Also, while the boom in salmon sperm facials might be terrible news for all the salmon who hope to be fathers one day, it is great news for your friend Doug who's been quietly hoarding salmones for the last 5 years. Treatments like that are available at facilities called Med Spars.
And you're probably at least familiar with them either because you've seen one pop up in your neighborhood or you've been pushed one of thousands of influencer videos about them like these. So today I'm going to be going to Look Lab Med Spa in Winter Park, Florida. I'm going to be getting a little bit of filler and then also some Botox.
Come with me to get my lips done. I am very particular on how I want my lips to be done. This is Infinity Med Spa where I get my BBL laser done.
It is so pretty on the inside. I went with no makeup. This is my nurse injector video.
And here's the after. My skin was so glowy. I felt like a glazed donut in the best way.
Okay. Well, I love that for you. And it's definitely a refreshing counter to my normal state of feeling like a glazed donut in the worst way, which is to say sticky, wet, and comprised of a series of soft, doughy pieces of unclear origin.
The point is, depending on what your algorithm knows about you, you might see a lot of MedSpar content, whether it's videos like those or ads promoting specials like this. very specific holiday themed [Music] [Applause] promo. Okay then.
Although I will say the music from Halloween might actually be the perfect choice for a med spa given the Michael Myers mask does look like what happens when the fillers don't hit. A med spa is essentially a business that provides aesthetic procedures including both medical and non-medical. For example, a facial, that's non-medical.
But lasers, Botox, and IV drips, those are medical. And while you can go to a doctor's office for those, for many, it's both easier and cheaper to go to the med spar down the block. And nowadays, they are everywhere.
It's estimated there are more than 10,000 med spars in business nationwide, with the industry generating an estimated 17 billion dollars annually. And they can be fun places. It's why they become a staple for bachelorette parties along with penis straws, tattoos of the groom's face, karaoke, and Katie locking herself in the bathroom cuz no one sang along when she chose all too well 10-minute version.
And she feels like that's just another example of the toxic energy she's been feeling all weekend. Medsa treatments have become so ubiquitous that, as one expert put it, they've been trivialized to the point that patients no longer see it as healthcare. But the fact is some of the procedures do carry the risks of traditional medical care.
And while many med spars are safe and staffed by careful professionals, the rapid rise of med spars has also been accompanied by a rapid rise in stories like this. And I kept saying, "Please, please stop, stop. Uh, it's burning.
" Johanna Surles has the pictures and she still has the scars. The results of laser hair removal at a med spa. The red dots uh are from the actual laser head.
Johanna won a voucher for the treatment and she said the facility looked so professional she figured it must be safe. It had a doctor's name right on the door. Um she had told me that it was under a doctor's supervision.
They all wore white coats. You pay for something thinking you're going to get this service done thinking you're under the care of a doctor or a doctor is supervising these um workers and there's nothing. There's there's no regulation.
Yeah, that would be confusing. If someone's wearing a white coat, you assume they're a doctor. In the same way, if someone's wearing a female body inspector shirt, you assume they're a virgin.
That is their uniform. The fact is this whole industry can fall into a regulatory gray area as many of the services they provide seem to fall between traditional aesthetic services and traditional medical practice. Meanwhile, other services definitely fall under the practice of medicine, but no one from practitioners to customers to law enforcement acts like it.
There are currently no federal standards for a med spa and no standard legal definition for what one even is. And that has left the market wide open for bad actors. In fact, med spars have been described as the wild west of medicine.
And it does get pretty wild. Only on 13, a man known on social media as Mr injector hauled out of a so-called med spa and sent straight to jail tonight. Accused of doing illegal injections.
The 42-year-old faces four felony charges. On social media, Moore calls himself Mr Injector 1. His page filled with his work.
Inside his Pasadena office under a neon Dustin Darling's sign, police say he did non FDA approved butt and Botox-like injections. Okay, so there is a lot going on there. From him doing illegal butt injections under a custom neon sign to the name Mr Injector 1, a handle that screams, "Fuck, I was too late.
" To his profile picture looking like a guy on a hinge who's about to message you, "You remind me of my mom. She's got a great rack. " Literally, nothing about this man seems good.
But the fact is, Mr Injector One is far from the only medar horror story. And if an industry is growing this fast and can be run this loosely, people are going to get hurt. So given that tonight, let's talk about med spars.
Let's start with the fact that their expansion has been fueled partially by the rise in demand for beauty treatments, but also by investors seeking a growth opportunity. Some med spars like these are even franchised, enabling someone to essentially buy a medical practice in a box. Here is the CEO of one wouldbe chain making his pitch.
The beauty about this beauty business is there are many things that are very attractive. Number one, all these is all this business is a cash business. So we don't have to deal with insurance.
You can have your med spa in a shopping center inside of a inside of a mall. So you get all the traffic from the mall. You can have it in a in a building for a doctor office or just for regular office.
And that's something very attractive for investors because you can open a business anywhere. Yeah, it's true. Although it's also not exactly reassuring to hear a medical facility being pitched the same way you'd pitch a Subway sandwich shop.
I know both technically involve getting suspicious looking goo inside you, but through vastly different delivery systems. And state by state, the laws governing meds spars can vary wildly. For instance, in New Jersey, only a doctor can perform laser hair removal.
Whereas in New York, literally anyone can do it as long as it seems you're an antagonistic Russian. Meanwhile, in Texas, anyone can be certified to be an injector and practice anywhere. It can get so confusing that in Oklahoma, their board of nursing guidelines recommended nurses use their own professional judgment to determine what procedures they can do based on relevant laws, which feels like they're one step away from just telling nurses to ask a magic eightball, "Am I allowed to give this woman chin filler?
" Oh, good news. All signs point to yes. And what this means is from the services they sell to the people they employ to the stuff they inject into you, Med Spars can be far less rigorously vetted than you might assume.
Let's start with the services which can range from safe and benign to complete snake oil. For instance, many med spars offer IV drips, sometimes simply for rehydration, but sometimes claiming that ingredients can boost a immunity, delay aging, or even prevent serious disease. All of which are total myths.
Other meds spars offer bizarre sounding treatments with little to no scientific basis behind them like ionic foot detox baths, ultraviolet blood irradiation, or insiflation of ozone through the vagina, rectum, or ear. And really, once you've insuffled your ear, you might as well squash your crotch and squinch your grinch. You're already there.
Then there are services that have been heavily branded and marketed like Acutight, Body Tight, True Sculpt, and Sculpture. All of which are performed with medical devices that are FDA cleared. And while that might sound reassuring, as we covered in our piece on medical devices, that doesn't really mean Because while FDA approved means the FDA's determined there's valid scientific evidence a device is safe and effective for its intended use, FDA cleared just means it's close enough to something that's already being sold that it can be legally marketed, which is barely one step above an FDA stamp declaring this exists.
And FDA cleared devices can do some good, but they can also do nothing or in some cases active harm. Take cool sculpting. Very basically, it involves placing a device onto a targeted part of the body to freeze fat cells.
But in some cases, it can result in a condition where the patient grows hard, fatty tissue, resulting in swellings and masses that can be permanent. Supermodel Linda Evangelista famously had that happen to her. Now, she got the procedure done at a dermatologist's office, but it's also widely available at MedSpar.
And if cool sculpting can go that wrong in the hands of an actual doctor, just imagine the damage someone like a Mr Injector One could do. And look, ideally you'd have a doctor talk you through the risks and benefits of any sort of procedure on offer, but that's not possible at many med spars because while they are required to be supervised by a medical professional with what's called full practice authority, that supervision can be done remotely and sometimes very remotely. Just watch this local news piece about a med spar in Wisconsin.
Aaron Gabriels claims to have performed more than 70,000 cosmetic procedures in Wisconsin. I am an expert. But he is not a doctor.
Instead, he says he works under the license of a doctor who's almost never in the building. Is he in the room at the time? No, he's not.
He's not on staff. Gabriel's owns Regenesis Laser and Wellness located in Shboen, but his medical director is Dr Jonathan Carter who works in Wasau 2 and 1 half hours away. He does come to our office once a year um but he is not in the room now.
Yeah, that doctor is hours away. And while he maintained that he often checked in on the phone and that doing it remotely did not compromise the quality of care, that doesn't really feel like supervision, does it? It is hard to know what's really going on somewhere if you only visit once a year.
Don't believe me? Ask any uncle. Last Christmas, little Caden loved trucks and now he's into the collected works of Patricia Highmith.
What have I missed here? And the fact medical supervision can be done from a distance is a feature of this industry to the point that sometimes someone will first decide to open a med spa and only then go out to recruit a medical director who then allow their license to be used to purchase drugs and equipment but may rarely if ever review charts, see patients or supervise treatments. And that recruitment process can be worryingly ad hoc to the point that there are even Facebook groups littered with posts like this one advertising doctors who can be paired with med spars in all 50 states.
Meanwhile, the actual staffs in some spars are primarily physicians assistants, nurse practitioners, and RNs. And nothing against people who hold those jobs. They can be extremely skilled, but their training on the procedures done in med spars can be thin at best given there are very few dermatology specific training programs for non-d doctors.
In 2023, out of tens of thousands of graduates from nurse practitioner programs, only 37 were certified in dermatology. So to fill that gap, companies have popped up to offer trainings and certifications that sound official but are not. One company, MySpar Live, even advertises that you can get certified and begin injecting after just one day of hands-on training with our expert instructors, which really does not feel like enough training to shoot a paralyzing neurotoxin into someone's face.
Especially because if you do it wrong, you could inadvertently inject into a blood vessel, cause skin necrosis, which is the permanent loss of skin tissue, or cause someone to go permanently blind. Even less severe reactions can be alarming. as one customer who got Botox from a technician who had some training certifications but no medical license discovered.
I just remember waking up and there being like bright lights and people in my face and everything like that and panic. She says she fainted. An EMS report also details a 5-minute seizure and vomiting.
In Texas, Botox injectors must have someone licensed in medicine supervising, like a physician assistant, a registered nurse, or a doctor serving as a medical director in case there are any complications. But police tell us the company's medical director listed online back then, was a pediatrician in Tyler, more than 3 hours away. Yeah, that's not good.
If something goes wrong, you don't want your official protocol to be calling a pediatrician 3 hours away for a number of reasons, including, do you know how many calls pediatricians are already fielding from panicked parents every day? My baby won't burp. My baby won't fart.
My baby grunts like a pig when she sleeps. My toddler swallows 17 Legos. My toddler sleeps upside down like a bat.
My toddler sounds like Alpuccino when she screams. My kid bumped his head and is acting strange. My kid bumped his head and is now speaking French.
My kid bumped his head and he's acting normal, but just wanted to call and say, "What's up? " Pediatricians don't have the bandwidth to handle adult Botox issues. The point is, a lot of the protections you associate with medical offices, just don't apply to med spars.
Oversight can be incredibly lax. Most states don't even require a medar registered their existence. And there have been cases where the laws were so loose, something like this could happen.
A young man suffered these second and third degree burns on his back after his mom took him to a med spa in MLAN. So they sent a complaint to delegate Mark Keane. Unfortunately for my constituent and her son, the person that was actually operating and doing the treatment itself was a janitor.
Yeah. Apparently a janitor performed laser hair removal. And I am not saying someone who works as a janitor doesn't have the capacity to be skilled at laser hair removal.
It's literally the plot of Goodwill Hunting, too, how you like them lasers. But it is still alarming. So clearly, med spars can massively cut corners on staffing and personnel, but they can also cut corners when it comes to what they're putting into your body.
Because real Botox is expensive and also requires a medical license to go and buy, which may be why there have been multiple stories of meda owners being accused of seeking out shortcuts like this. To her skin bay meda clients, Rebecca Fedinelli presented herself as a nurse. But now the feds say since March 2021, the 38-year-old esthetician was not licensed or certified when she gave thousands of illegal counterfeit Botox, Sculptra, and Juvéderm injections, which she imported from China and Brazil.
Fedinelli later admitted to the feds she buys the injectable drugs from a Chinese supplier through Alibaba, but didn't know if they were FDA approved. Yeah, you can get fake Botox on Alibaba. And you know, of course you can.
You can find basically anything on Alibaba. Facial injections, refrigerated trucks, pet coffins, this animatronic dinosaur, and this Hollywood star Michael Jackson life-size wax figure for Selfie Museum. And look, that item might well be top quality.
One reviewer who purchased an Iron Man wax figure from that seller said, "Tripa plus super honest and profetion or seller. We recommended 100%. Thanks, we happy.
" to which the manufacturer replied, "Thank you, dear. We will keep going. " But you would hope when it comes to something that's going to be injected into your face, it would be coming from a reputable company and not a website that literally advertises this before and after photo next to three bottles simply marked logo.
And while that woman has since plead not guilty, there have been so many stories of med spars using counterfeit or improperly administered Botox. The FDA issued a warning last year noting they found 22 people sickened across 11 states. Many spars also offer weight loss drugs that were concocted by compoundingies.
That can also be the case with vitamin injections and IV drips. But as we've discussed before, compoundingies are highly unregulated and don't have to rep report adverse effects to the FDA, meaning that no one may even know if things go wrong. There there've even been horror stories like the unlicensed med spot in New Mexico that offered a treatment called a vampire facial in which a small amount of blood is drawn and then reinjected into the patient's face with micro needles after at least three women were infected with HIV.
An inspector revealed unsanitary conditions, needles and blood specimens being reused, and unlabeled tubes of blood being stored in the kitchen fridge along with food. And I guess we should at least just be grateful that that food was labeled because you wouldn't want to accidentally inject a patient with Patty's Thai salad don't touch. And when you take all of this together, unlicensed providers using sketchy products to perform risky procedures, you can wind up with a case like what happened to an influencer named Beer Armor, who went to a med spa that she thought was legitimate for B12 shots and was upsold into getting fat dissolving injections.
I'll let her pick up the story from there. And I'll warn you, if you're squeamish, this will make you squeam. Within 24 hours, I started having these incredible shakes and my body was going through these hot flashes.
And all of a sudden, my skin just starts hurting and these welts just start growing throughout my skin. Look what she says happened. Dozens of skin lesions erupting across her body.
Each representing a point where she says she got a needle injection. She was diagnosed with mcoacterium obsessis, a drugresistant bacterial infection that can cause painful skin lesions. Holy She went in for B12 shots and came out with what looks like an Old Testament plague.
She was in the hospital for 4 months, went through numerous surgeries, and was on intensive antibiotic treatment. She ultimately learned that the mystery substance that had been injected into her had been bought off guess where? Alibaba.
And while she pursued a lawsuit, she says it hit a dead end because the practitioner had no license to take, no malpractice insurance to cover it, and no real assets to speak of. And while that story was extreme, the lack of accountability is honestly not that surprising. If you're injured at an unlicensed med spar, there's often little to no recourse unless law enforcement takes an interest in your case.
And I know that some might say beer armor shouldn't have taken that risk in the first place. In fact, victims of this kind of thing are often unwilling to speak publicly about what happened to them because they're too ashamed. But she has a pretty good response to anyone who tries to judge those who've been harmed in this way.
Whenever they share after the fact, then they start getting blamed for, oh, you didn't need to do that. And it's like, okay, stop. Let's stop it right there because the girl who has the the good boob job right next door, you're going to be like, oh man, those are some nice tits.
But god forbid she go through a mcoacterium and lose one of her breasts and then you're going to say, "Oh my god, you shouldn't have been so vain and gotten boob implants, right? " It's okay to want these procedures. It's also okay not to want them.
And it is not acceptable to bombard a stranger with unsolicited comments or shaming about their body. Unless that is they host a late night talk show that post their episodes to YouTube at which point that person is basically asking for comments like get a spray tan Pillsbury Dogee. This rickety looks Victorian ill and this guy has the face of someone who'd be turned into a humidifier in the Beauty and the Beast castle.
It's it's always nice hearing from the fans. The point is, it's both reasonable to want these services and to expect the people providing them to be licensed and adequately supervised. But far too often, they just aren't.
And the problem is, if things don't significantly change, we're going to continue to see more stories like this. A Frisco doctor's medical license is suspended over the death of a patient more than a 100 miles away. It happened at Lux Med Spa in Woreram, Texas.
Jennifer Cleveland received IV therapy from the spa's owner in July. The Texas Medical Board says employees there were not licensed to give IVs and had not trained to manage complications. Cleveland, a wife and mother died shortly after the treatment began.
Yeah, that is awful. And I will say in the wake of that death, the Texas legislature, to their credit, passed a bill that would require elective IV therapy to be administered by licensed medical professionals, which really does not seem too ownorous a requirement. In fact, it's one of those things you'd assume was already happening.
It would be like seeing a McDonald's commercial that says, "Now made with real cow meat. " Wait, what? What the was happening before?
The point is, Governor Abbott should absolutely sign that bill. As for what can be done more broadly, well, I cannot believe I even need to say this, but bare minimum, state laws and regulation should be clearly written, well publicized, and enforced. Many of these procedures constitute the practice of medicine and should be regulated as such.
But laws can only do so much when they're ignored. And when demand is this high and there is such a clear profit motive, there's always going to be the possibility that sketchy providers will break the rules. So if you are looking for any of these more invasive treatments, your safest bet is to find a trusted doctor who's experienced in aesthetics.
But if you're still considering going to a med spa for any kind of treatment, you should research where you're going and look up the names and credentials of that MedSpar's medical director and providers. Make sure that you're given a thorough consultation, also known as a good faith exam, and ask what their protocol is. If something bad happens, if you're getting injections, ask to see the vials.
And if they respond by acting defensively or won't show them to you, get the out of there. Look, this is an industry badly in need of oversight. Because right now, in too many places, it is far too easy to set up something that has all the appearances of medicine, but none of the protections.
And perhaps the best way to show you that is to invite you to the grand opening of a brand new med spa started by the woman I'm married to and therefore cannot be compelled to testify against. Please join me in Body Face by Wonder Joe right here in our studio. Hi everybody.
Hello. Hi there. Hello to you.
I wonder, you you are absolutely glowing. Oh, I know I am. And that's thanks to regularly taking salmon jizz straight to the face.
It's just one of the many medicine adjacent procedures we offer here at Body Face by Wanda Joe. Wanda, I've got to ask, where do you get the salmon sperm? Oh, well, you can get it anywhere there's a stream if you've got time, patience, and two working fingers.
But I get it from Alibaba because if I order with my wax statues, I get double points. I wonder if someone wanted to come here for a treatment, would they be safe to do so? Oh, absolutely, M.
John. Like many med spas, we have a medical director on staff to supervise. She's the best.
She's a veterinarian on Prince Edward Island. Wait, isn't that in Canada? Yeah.
So, she's dirt cheap. And if there's an emergency, no problem. She has to board a ferry, but after that, she can get here in 38 hours flat if she doesn't stop to pee.
Manda, what does Body Face provide besides fish sperm facials? Well, we do it all. Botox, fillers, cool sculpting, ozone ear fuckulation, uh, vaginal tightening, vaginal loosening, photosynthesis, ultraviolet floops, and as a new client bonus, we'll suck out your pube fat with a crazy straw.
Oh, that is a bonus. Yes. Plus, every client at Body Face Medpa officially becomes one of Wanda Joe's little hoes.
Oh, I've always wanted to be a little hoe. Yes. Well, at Body Face Meda, we can make you anything you want to be now.
Scram, John. I got an ad to shoot. Get out of here.
Come on, girls. Come on out. No, no, no, no, no, no.
I actually don't like this. This is bad. No, I I I don't want any part of this.
That is our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week.
Good night. No, that's actually too much. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Nope.
Nope. Nope. No.
I don't like it. I don't like it. No.
No. No. Stop it.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
Stop it. Stop it.
