Amanda Holden
Since becoming available in 2002, Botox has been the must have cure for aging. Celebrities such as Danni Minogue, LuLu and Amanda Holden have admitted to using Botox in the past and many woman are now turning to it to set back the years.
The procedure was originally only allowed to be performed by doctors, but now all you need to do to be qualified to administer this potentially life threatening drug is take part in a day long, £120 course.
The recent story of Kerry Campbell injecting her own daughter with the drug shocked the nation and ended with Campbell's daughter being removed from her care.
Self injecting is becoming more and more common, with people buying the drug from other countries off the internet and administering it to themselves using 'how to' video clips from the internet as a guide.
Foreign countries manage to get away with selling Botox online as they do not have to adhere to the UK laws which prevent Botox being advertised or sold without a prescription.
Dr Aamer Khan of London's Harley Street Medical Skin Clinic told Mirror.co.uk that Botulinum-A Toxin (Botox) is "the most toxic substance known to mankind" and warns that it's so lethal that one teaspoon could kill 90 billion people, which is why it was considered a biological weapon.
In 2009 a Botox DIY kit appeared on Ebay for just £62. It contained needles, saline solution to mix the Botox powder (Botulinum) with and a facial map to show where to inject the drug.
Which? investigated the claims and found them to be true. Ebay were alerted and removed the product immediately, but despite this it is still terrifyingly easy to get hold of the drug.
Journalist Julie McCaffrey wrote of how easy it was for her to get her hands on the wrinkle-busting product. All she had to do was type 'buy Botox' into her browser and an array of sites sprung up offering her the service.
Shockingly, after filling in a quick questionnaire she is then asked whether she has a prescription and when she says that she doesn't she is informed that "Dr Chouan" has given her a medical review and approved her prescription - for just an extra £3.
Three weeks later the package arrives with her address handwritten and a postmark from Turkey even though the website carried a London based address. The Botox did come with instructions, but they were written completely in Turkish.
Every nerve in your body should tell you to run screaming from the package, yet many woman still inject themselves with what claims to be Botox. The reality is that what the package claims as Botox could be anything and many women have had to spend money putting right what the dodgy 'Botox' has done to their face.
Dr Khan has treated a number of woman who have had bad experiences with self-injecting Botox, from having to reform a young girls lips, to trying to repair one woman's droopy eyelids.
Unfortunatly the casualties don't stop at uneven lips and droopy faces. Back in 2004 Bach McComb, a doctor who had been struck off the medical register, injected himself and three others with cheap Botox that was 2,850 times the lethal dose.
All four of the particpants came close to death when they suffered breathing difficulties and paralysis. Amazingly they all survived, others may not be so lucky in the future.
As well as the obvious health dangers, there are also dangers of pyschological damage, such as becoming addicted to the procedure.
51-year-old Magaret King had been getting Botox for 11 years when she decided to buy her daughter the treatment for her 18th birthday back in 2009. Her daughter, Jodie, said that she wanted the procedure because she had lines on her forehead and didn't have smooth skin like her friends.
Jodie continued to top up on the Botox thinking she needed it and had spent £1,000 on the procedures when the article was released. A young girl thinking that she needs Botox and becoming dependent on it isn't healthy and could lead her to extreme measures in order to maintain her 18-year-old looks.
An extreme case of the pyschological damage that cosmetic procedures can cause came to light with the horrific story of Hang Mioku.
Mioku became so obsessed with surgery after having her first procedure at 28, that she resorted to injecting cooking oil into her face after running out of silicone.
Her face swelled up to three times the size and left her so disfigured that when she appeared on a Korean TV show, viewers called in and donated money so that she could have corrective surgery. Despite doctors performing the surgery to their best ability, Mioku has been left with scarring over her entire face and she will never be able to fully rectify the damage that injecting the cooking oil caused.
Although this is an extreme case, it shows the damage that can be done in the quest for a youthful appearance, and will hopefully make woman think twice about endangering their looks, and possibly their lives over Botox.
FemaleFirst
Cara Mason
Tagged in Botox