CHICAGO — At the very end of his seventh season as Green Bay’s coach, Matt LaFleur saw a team that lacked composure at big moments in a playoff game.
It was an all-too-familiar scene for the Packers — one that will follow LaFleur for a long time.
“We’ve got to look at it. We’ve got to talk. There’s a lot of pieces,” he said. “All you’re trying to do in the moment is, when mistakes are made, you’re correcting them. There’s not long discussions on the sideline. It’s just you correct the mistakes and you try to keep it moving. And I felt like just our team got a little bit disheveled in the second half.”
It sure did.
Green Bay blew a 21-6 lead in the fourth quarter of a wild 31-27 loss to the Chicago Bears in the wild-card round of the playoffs on Saturday night. The collapse included two big misses by Brandon McManus on an extra point and a 44-yard field goal, along with a delay-of-game penalty coming out of a timeout and a fumbled snap on the final play of the game.
It was the fifth consecutive loss for Green Bay (9-8-1), a season-ending slide that featured two dramatic losses at Chicago. The Packers blew a 16-6 lead in the final minutes of regulation in a 22-16 overtime loss to the Bears on Dec. 20.
Green Bay dropped to 33-3 in the playoffs when it led by at least 10 points. The other losses were against the Seattle Seahawks in the 2014 NFC title game and the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2003 divisional round.
“We had a game where we couldn’t finish it and let a team come back and beat us,” quarterback Jordan Love said. “So it’s very disappointing to end the season on a note like that. So, yeah, everybody is very disappointed. I’m very disappointed, and that’s it.”
The tough finish could lead to major changes for Green Bay.
LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst each have one year remaining on their contracts. Ed Policy, who took over as Green Bay’s president and CEO last summer, has said he’s “generally opposed” to the idea of having a coach or GM enter the final year of a contract without an extension.
LaFleur, 46, declined to get into the specifics of his situation after the loss, but he said being Green Bay’s coach “means everything” to him. He also got a vote of confidence from his quarterback.
“I definitely think Matt should be the head coach,” Love said. “I’ve got a lot of love for Matt, and I think he does a good job.”
Love threw three of his four touchdown passes in the first half. The Packers had a 21-3 lead when McManus missed a 55-yard field goal on the final play of the second quarter.
Love’s 23-yard TD pass to Matthew Golden made it 27-16 with 6:36 left, but McManus was wide left on the extra-point attempt. His missed 44-yard try would have provided a 30-24 lead in the final minutes.
“It’s disappointing,” McManus said. “My role on the team is to make kicks, and these guys pour in thousands of plays over the course of the season, and I leave seven points on the board today. Like I said, it’s the most disappointing part of my career right now.”
A delay-of-game flag coming out of a Green Bay timeout played a role in the drive stalling ahead of McManus’ final kick of the night. LaFleur called the penalty “inexcusable.”
The Packers drove to the Bears’ 23 on their final possession, but offensive lineman Rasheed Walker was called for a false start before Love threw two incomplete passes. The timing on the final play was thrown off when Love dropped the snap.
“We had a play called to be able to take a shot to the end zone,” Love said. “And then, depending on the coverage they were playing, how soft they were, trying to pick up an easy couple yards to the sidelines, that’s what we went to. When I fumbled the snap, couldn’t get that, it kind of turned into last-second Hail Mary.”
Chicago Bears’ DJ Moore catches a touchdown pass during the second half of an NFL wild-card playoff football game against the Green Bay Packers Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Huh)
NEW YORK (AP) — Dogs are great at learning action commands like “sit” and “stay.” They’re less good at remembering the names of things, like what their squeaky or stuffed toys are called.
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Only an elite group of gifted word-learner dogs can retain the names of hundreds of toys. Scientists know of about 50 such pooches, but they aren’t yet sure what’s behind their wordy skills.
Scientists already knew that these extraordinary pups could learn the names of their stuffed pizza and doughnut toys from playtime with their owners. In the latest study, they discovered that the pups can also understand new names by eavesdropping.
Ten gifted dogs — including a Border collie named Basket and a Labrador named Augie — watched their owners hold a new toy and talk to another person about it. Then the pups were told to go to another room and retrieve that specific toy from a pile of many others.
Seven out of the 10 dogs successfully learned the names of their new toy stingrays and armadillos from passively listening to their owners.
“This is the first time that we see a specific group of dogs that are able to learn labels from overhearing interactions,” said study author Shany Dror with Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and the University of Veterinary Medicine in Austria.
The pups even succeeded when the owners put the toy in an opaque box and then spoke to another person about it, creating a disconnect between seeing the object and hearing its name.
Only a few other animals, like parrots and apes, have demonstrated a knack for this kind of eavesdropping. It’s also essential to human development: Children under age 2 can pick up new words from listening, including ones their parents may not have intended.
This 2022 image provided by Shany Dror shows a dog named Mugsy in Massachusetts, who has learned the names of many of her toys. (Francine Hannan/Shany Dror via AP)
However, these special dogs are fully grown, so the brain mechanisms enabling them to eavesdrop are likely different from those of humans, Dror said.
The new work shows how “animals have a lot more going on cognitively than maybe you think they do,” said animal cognition expert Heidi Lyn with the University of South Alabama. She had no role in the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Science.
Not all dogs pick things up like this, so it’s unlikely your furry friend is learning names while snacking on leftovers under the dinner table.
Dror hopes to keep studying the gifted pooches and figuring out what cues they’re picking up on. They’re some of her most enthusiastic — and messy — research subjects.
“We do have dogs coming to the lab sometimes, which is really nice,” she said, “but then often someone pees on the couch. So that does happen.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LOS ANGELES — We often think of memories like the contents of a museum: static exhibits that we view to understand the present and prepare for the future.
The latest research, however, suggests they are more like well-thumbed library books that wear and change a little bit every time they’re pulled off the shelf.
Think of one of your happiest memories. For real. Sit with the recollection. Let your mind’s eye wander around the scene. See if you can feel a spark of the joy or hope you felt at the time. Let a minute pass. Maybe two.
If you played along with this experiment, you are physically different now than you were a few minutes ago.
When you began to reminisce, brain cells dormant just seconds before began firing chemicals at one another. That action triggered regions of your brain involved in processing emotions, which is why you may have re-experienced some feelings you did at the time of the event.
Chemical and electrical signals shot out to the rest of your body. If you were stressed before you began this exercise, your heart rate probably slowed and stabilized as levels of cortisol and other stress hormones decreased in your blood. If you were already calm, your heart rate may have quickened with excitement.
In either case, regions of the brain that light up when you get a reward jittered with dopamine.
The memory changed you. But by pulling this memory to mind, neuroscientist Steve Ramirez says, you also changed the memory.
Some elements of the memory heightened in importance. Others receded. Your brain snipped out and inserted details without your conscious knowledge. The mood you were in at the time of reminiscence left emotional fingerprints on the memory, as neurons activated by your mental environment synced up with those activated by the recollection.
Every time you revisit this heartwarming scene you change it a little bit, both as a subjective experience and a physical network of cells.
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Humans have engaged in this two-way operation of memory revision for as long as we’ve been conscious. But over the last two decades, neuroscientists have found mind-bending ways to control this process (in mice, at least): implanting false memories, deleting real ones, resurrecting memories thought lost to brain damage, detaching the memory of an emotional reaction to one event and attaching it to the memory of another.
“It is all part of a larger revolution brewing in science to make memory manipulation a commonplace practice in the lab,” Ramirez writes in his recent book, “How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past” (Princeton University Press). “A memory may transform me entirely, but I have the power to transform it as well — both with my mind and with my science.”
In movies about stuff like this, there’s often a sinister air around the memory-tweaking scientist character. Ramirez, a Boston University professor, is friendly, earnest and keeps a giant inflatable T-rex named Henry in his office.
He sees this research not as the next frontier of coercive mind control but as another way to alleviate mental suffering, alongside medications and cognitive therapies.
“It’s amazing that we can do these things in contemporary neuroscience,” Ramirez said recently from his lab in Boston. “But the real-life, overarching goal of all of this is to restore health and well-being to an organism. … Memory manipulation is another antidote [that] can be part of our toolkit in the clinic.”
Memory is the reason Ramirez exists at all.
His father was once kidnapped at gunpoint by soldiers in his native El Salvador and falsely accused of being a left-wing guerrilla. (Their “evidence”: He had a beard.) He was spared execution when one of his captors took a second look at his face and recognized him as the generous schoolmate who used to share his lunch.
Both of Ramirez’s parents emigrated to the U.S. before his birth, and raised him and his older siblings in Boston. Ramirez got a bachelor’s in neuroscience from Boston University in 2010 and his doctorate from MIT in 2017. As a graduate student he joined the lab of Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, where he was paired with a postdoc fellow named Xu Liu.
Both Ramirez and Liu were drawn to the study of memory as a possible therapeutic tool, and instantly hit it off as friends and lab partners.
Their first major breakthrough together came in 2012.
Three years earlier, a University of Toronto team identified the neurons that lit up when a mouse was exposed to a scary stimulus — in this case, a sound that earlier accompanied a shock. The Toronto researchers then injected the mice with a toxin that killed only those brain cells that lit up when they heard the sound.
If a memory could be deleted in the lab, Ramirez and Liu reasoned, one could be implanted.
For their experiment, the pair identified brain cells in a mouse hippocampus that activated when the animal received a startling shock. Then they took the mouse out of the enclosure where the shock occurred and placed it in a new box with no sights or other sensory cues associated with the memory of its old environment. Next, using millisecond-long pulses of light, they activated those same brain cells — without the physical shock of the earlier stimulus.
The mouse acted exactly as it had when the shock happened, even though no shock occurred.
You can’t interview a mouse about its memories. Researchers base their conclusions on the animal’s behavior. And in this case, it appeared that they’d turned a memory on.
“It just blew everyone away,” said Sheena Josselyn, a University of Toronto neuroscientist who led the 2009 work on erasing fear memories. “When you can do those sorts of things to memories, you know you have found the neural basis of a memory.”
In 2013, Ramirez and Liu set a mouse loose in a box — let’s call it, as Ramirez does in his book, Box A — and took note of the brain cells that activated as it explored the environment.
They then scooped it up and placed it in a second box, Box B. With minuscule pulses of light, they reactivated the cells that lit up in Box A, triggering a memory of that earlier environment as it explored the new one. At the same time, they gave the mouse a shock.
When they put the mouse back in Box A, a place where it had never been harmed, it froze in fear.
The mouse’s negative memory of being shocked in Box B had, essentially, been remapped to what was previously a neutral memory of Box A. The scientists had created a false memory, another seminal feat.
For their final project together, they put a mouse in an enclosure with other mice and took note of the neurons that fired as it responded positively to the social interaction.
Then they moved that mouse to a smaller cage than usual, where it was alone.
At first, this rodent equivalent of downsizing dimmed the mouse’s mood.
Given the choice between plain and sugary water, healthy mice prefer the latter. But when stressed or depressed, mice show no preference. That’s how Ramirez and Liu’s lonely mouse acted initially.
But when the scientists activated neurons associated with the memory of hanging out with other mice, the mouse’s behavior suddenly changed. It enthusiastically slurped the sweet water. Remembering better times had changed its behavior to resemble that of a healthy mouse.
The paper was published in 2015 in the prestigious journal Nature. But unlike their past shared achievements, this one couldn’t be celebrated together. As it was going through the review process, Liu died suddenly at the age of 37.
Grief, Ramirez writes, is not so different from memory: “Both endure across the entire lifespan, forever changing us, helping us to decide what matters most.”
Ramirez, now 37, opened his own lab at Boston University in 2017. In the years since, memory researchers have made impressive strides: restoring memories lost to amnesia, activating a memory while suppressing the emotions attached to it, detaching the emotional reaction to one memory and attaching it to another. The tools now exist to erase whole events and corresponding emotions from mouse brains, or to artificially jump-start memories and all the feelings that go with them.
But there is no expectation in the research community that laser-wielding doctors will one day artificially reshape human patients’ memories.
For one, these experiments are possible only with mice that have been genetically modified to have brain cells that light up when exposed to lasers. Genetically altering a human in this manner, researchers interviewed for this story said, is neither ethical nor practical.
It’s also not necessary.
“We don’t need to generate technophobic fears of a digital future where our memories will be distorted — our memories can already be distorted very effectively by nondigital means,” memory scientists Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy wrote in “Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember,” published in 2025.
Humans are suggestible creatures with extremely pliable memories. Armed with little more than a few leading questions, researchers have found that most humans can be easily manipulated into believing that they did or saw something they didn’t. We don’t need lasers to activate our memories, which can be summoned at will or triggered by any number of sensory cues, or to edit their contents, which our brains do constantly without any conscious input from us.
The real goal of research like his, Ramirez said, is to establish the biological mechanisms of memory and apply that knowledge to noninvasive therapies.
If researchers understand exactly how to retrieve a memory from a mouse hippocampus that brain damage has rendered inaccessible, for example, that information could be the basis for a drug that helps preserve or strengthen certain types of memory in people suffering from dementia or other cognitive disorders.
Understanding how an animal brain encodes memories and the emotional responses they evoke could lead to better cognitive therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The obvious dark side of this line of research is that someone who understands how to boost well-being through memory manipulation could just as easily use the same knowledge for pernicious ends.
“The idea of artificially changing our own memories might elicit uneasy feelings of a dystopic future where relationships are erased, identities are replaced, and governmental powers implant thoughts in our heads to mind-control society,” Ramirez writes in his book. But, he said, any tool in existence can be used to harm or help, and he’d rather make well-intended progress than none at all.
“The idea of memory manipulation, to me, makes sense if we have an ethically bounded goal, and that ethically bounded goal is to restore health and nourish human well being,” he said. “Exercise is an antidote for the brain, and social enrichment is an antidote [and] a good night’s sleep is an antidote. What if toggling with memories in a therapeutic manner can also be an antidote? Then we’re in business.”
Lenia Watson-Burton, a 37-year-old U.S. Navy administrator, expected that cosmetic surgery would get rid of stubborn fat quickly and easily — just as the web advertising promised.
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Instead, she died three days after a liposuction-like procedure called AirSculpt at the San Diego office of Elite Body Sculpture, a cosmetic surgery chain with more than 30 offices across the U.S. and Canada, court records show.
Cosmetic surgery chains setting up shop in multiple states depend heavily on advertising to attract customers: television, print, social media influencers, even texts hawking discounted holiday rates. The pitches typically promise patients life-changing body shaping with minimal pain and a quick recovery.
Yet there’s no federal requirement that surgery companies post evidence supporting the truth and accuracy of these marketing claims. No agency tracks how frequently patients persuaded by sales pitches sustain painful complications such as infections, how effectively surgeons and nursing staff follow up and treat injuries, or whether companies selling new aesthetic devices and methods have adequately trained surgeons to use them safely.
In 2023, Watson-Burton’s husband and six children and stepchildren sued Elite Body Sculpture and plastic surgeon Heidi Regenass for medical malpractice, alleging that the thin cannula the surgeon used to remove fat perforated Watson-Burton’s bowel, causing her death.
The suit also accused Elite Body Sculpture of posting false or misleading advertising on its website, such as describing the clinic’s branded procedure AirSculpt as “gentle on the body” and stating: “Our patients take the fewest possible risks and get back to their regular routine as soon as 24-48 hours post-operation.”
Watson-Burton was one of three patients who died after having liposuction and fat transfer operations performed by Regenass from October 2022 to February 2023, court records state. Families of all three women sued the surgeon, who denied wrongdoing in legal filings. The parties settled the Watson-Burton family case in 2024. Two other wrongful death cases are pending, including a suit by an Ohio woman who alleges her mother relied on promises on Regenass’ website that the operation in California would be safe with a quick recovery.
Neither Regenass nor her attorneys responded to repeated requests for comment. Emails and phone calls to Elite Body Sculpture’s Miami headquarters were not returned.
State and federal authorities do have the power to prohibit false or misleading medical advertising of all types, though enforcement is spotty, particularly when promotions pop up online. That means patients must do their own homework in evaluating cosmetic surgery marketing pitches.
“While consumers should be able to trust that ad claims are substantiated because the law requires them to be, the reality is that it pays for consumers to bring a skeptical eye,” said Mary Engle, an executive vice president at BBB National Programs.
‘Up a Cup’
Founded by cosmetic surgeon Aaron Rollins, Elite Body Sculpture says in Securities and Exchange Commission filings that it offers a “premium patient experience and luxurious, spa-like atmosphere” at its growing network of centers. The publicly traded company, based in Miami Beach and backed by private equity investors, markets AirSculpt as being “much less invasive than traditional liposuction” and providing “faster healing with superior results.” The ads say that AirSculpt “requires no scalpel, or stitches, and only leaves behind a freckle-sized scar!” and that patients “remain awake the whole time and can walk right out of their procedure, enjoying dramatic results!” Some risks are disclosed.
Rollins, who recently made headlines for putting his Indian Creek mansion on the market for $200 million, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A lawyer for Rollins, Robert Peal, responded to an email but didn’t comment. On Nov. 4, the company announced that Rollins had resigned as executive chairman of the board of directors of AirSculpt Technologies and as a member of the board.
Many AirSculpt patients opt to have fat that is removed from their stomachs or other places injected into their buttocks, often called a Brazilian butt lift. Others use the fat to enhance their breasts, a procedure the company brands as “Up a Cup.” Since March 2023, at least seven patients have filed lawsuits accusing Elite Body Sculpture of running misleading advertising or misrepresenting results, arguing, among other things, that they felt more pain or healed much more slowly than the ads led them to believe they would, court records show. One of the lawsuits has been dismissed, and the company has denied the allegations in others.
The Watson-Burton family argued in their lawsuit that some marketing claims about AirSculpt were simply not true.
For instance, Elite Body Sculpture’s website stated that AirSculpt has “automated technology” set to “turn off” before the cannula penetrates the body too deeply and possibly causes serious injury, according to the suit. That feature didn’t protect Watson-Burton, who paid $12,000 for the operation, hoping for a “quick and timely recovery” before a scheduled U.S. Navy deployment, according to the lawsuit.
Rather than being gentle on the body, AirSculpt was “extremely painful, highly invasive, unsafe, required more than a short 24-hour recovery period and could and did damage internal organs,” according to the suit.
Watson-Burton called the San Diego center on Oct. 27, 2022, a day after the operation, to report “severe pain” in her upper abdomen, but staffers took no action to evaluate her, according to the suit. The next morning, an ambulance rushed her to a hospital, where emergency surgery confirmed the gravity of her injuries. Surgeons noted her injuries included three perforations of the small bowel and sepsis.
Watson-Burton died on Oct. 29, 2022. An autopsy report cited complications of the cosmetic surgery, ruling she died after becoming “septic following intraoperative small bowel perforation.” Her death certificate lists the cause as “complications of abdominoplasty.”
In court filings, Elite Body Sculpture said Watson-Burton had “experienced an uncommon surgical complication.” The company denied that it made any “specific guarantee or representation that injury to organs could not occur.” It denied any liability or that its ads made misrepresentations.
The dispute never played out fully in court. The parties settled the case in August 2024, when Elite Body Sculpture agreed to pay Watson-Burton’s family $2 million, the maximum under its insurance policy. Regenass, the surgeon, who did not carry liability insurance, agreed to pay $100,000 more, according to the settlement agreement.
Promises Not Kept
Social media pitches and web advertising also led Tamala Smith, 55, of Toledo, Ohio, to Regenass for liposuction and a fat transfer, court records state.
Ste’ Aira Ballard’ s mother, Tamala Smith, died less than two weeks after having liposuction and a fat transfer procedure performed at a California cosmetic surgery clinic. ((Nic Antaya for KFF Health News)/KFF Health News/TNS)
“I just don’t understand how she came back to me in a body bag,” says Ste’ Aira Ballard, who holds a photo of her mother, Tamala Smith. ((Nic Antaya for KFF Health News)/KFF Health News/TNS)
Ste’ Aira Ballard holds a 1983 photograph of her as a baby with her mother, Tamala Smith. ((Nic Antaya for KFF Health News)/KFF Health News/TNS)
Ste’ Aira Ballard shows the ring her mother, Tamala Smith, used to wear. ((Nic Antaya for KFF Health News)/KFF Health News/TNS)
Tamala Smith, a traveling nurse who resided in Toledo, Ohio, underwent liposuction and a fat transfer procedure at a California cosmetic surgery clinic after seeing advertisements that promised a quick recovery. ((Nic Antaya for KFF Health News)/KFF Health News/TNS)
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Ste’ Aira Ballard’ s mother, Tamala Smith, died less than two weeks after having liposuction and a fat transfer procedure performed at a California cosmetic surgery clinic. ((Nic Antaya for KFF Health News)/KFF Health News/TNS)
Smith was dead less than two weeks later, one of two other women who died following elective operations Regenass performed from December 2022 to February 2023, court records show. The surgeon operated on the two women at Pacific Liposculpture, which runs three surgery centers in Southern California, court records state.
The families of both women are suing Regenass, a board-certified plastic surgeon, and the surgery center. In both cases, which are pending in California courts, Regenass and the surgery center have denied the allegations and filed dismissal motions that deny responsibility for the deaths.
Smith was a traveling registered nurse working the overnight shift at a hospital in Los Angeles. She chose Regenass after viewing the doctor’s Instagram page, according to a lawsuit filed by Smith’s daughter, Ste’Aira Ballard, who lives in Toledo.
The ads described the surgeon as an “awake liposuction and fat transfer specialist,” while her website assured patients they would feel minimal pain and be “back to work in 24-48 hours,” according to the suit.
During the three-hour operation on Feb. 8, 2023, at Pacific Liposculpture’s Newport Beach office, Regenass removed fat from Smith’s abdomen and flanks and redistributed it to her buttocks, according to the suit. Smith called the office at least twice in subsequent days to report pain and swelling, but a staffer told her that was normal, according to the suit. Smith never spoke to the surgeon, according to the suit.
When Ballard couldn’t reach her mother, she called the hospital only to learn Smith hadn’t turned up for her overnight shift for two days. The hospital called police and asked for a welfare check at the extended-stay hotel in Glendale, California, where Smith had been living.
An officer discovered her body on the bed “surrounded by towels and sheets that are stained with brown and green fluids,” according to a coroner’s report in the court file. A countertop in the room was “covered in medical paperwork detailing post-operative instructions from a liposuction clinic,” according to the report. Ballard said she learned of her mother’s death when she called Smith’s cellphone; a police officer answered and delivered the devastating news.
“Oh, my God, I fell to the floor,” Ballard said in an interview with KFF Health News and NBC News. Ballard said she still has not gotten over the shock and grief. “It bothers me because how does someone that dedicated their life to save other people’s lives end up deceased in a hotel, as if her life didn’t matter?” she asked.
Ballard said her mother trusted Regenass based on her web persona. She believes her mother, a registered nurse, would not have gone to the surgeon had she known someone had died after an operation Regenass performed at the Pacific Liposculpture San Diego office. Terri Bishop, 55, a truck driving instructor who lived in Temecula, California, died on Dec. 24, 2022, about three weeks after undergoing liposuction and fat transfer at Pacific Liposculpture, a company with a history of run-ins with state regulators.
Pacific Liposculpture did not respond to requests for comment. In court filings, the company has denied that the operations played a role in either patient’s death and moved to dismiss the cases. The company also argued that Ballard waited too long to file suit.
Bishop, who had a history of smoking, diabetes, and high blood pressure, died from “arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease aggravated by viral pneumonia (Influenza A H1 2009),” according to a Riverside County medical examiner’s report made part of the court record. The family disagrees and is arguing that Bishop died from blood clots, a known complication of surgery. A trial is set for June 2026.
In Smith’s case, the Los Angeles County medical examiner ruled the nurse died of “renal failure of unknown cause.” The autopsy report noted: “This is a natural death since an injury directly from the surgery cannot be identified.”
Ballard is demanding further investigation to get to the bottom of what happened to her mother.
“I don’t think they were straightforward with the risk and complications that could occur,” Ballard said. “I think they are promising people stuff they can’t deliver.”
Ballard filed a complaint against Regenass with the California Medical Board, which the board is investigating, according to documents she provided to KFF Health News and NBC News. She believes regulators need to be more transparent about the backgrounds of surgeons who offer services to the public. She also hopes the investigation will shake loose more details of what happened to her mother.
“I just don’t understand how she came back to me in a body bag,” she said.
“I think they are promising people stuff they can’t deliver.”
‘Buyer Beware’
Concerns about sales pitches for cosmetic surgery date back decades.
Witnesses testifying at a June 1989 congressional hearing held by a subcommittee of the House Small Business Committee in Washington heard a litany of horror stories of patients maimed by surgeons with dubious training and credentials. Subcommittee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said patients were victimized by deceptive and false ads that promised a “quick, easy and painless way to change your life — all through the cosmetic surgery miracle.”
Calling for reform, Wyden added: “So, cosmetic surgery consumers are largely on their own. It’s back to a buyer beware market, and it smacks more of used car sales than medicine.” Wyden now represents Oregon in the U.S. Senate.
All these years later, there’s far more territory to police: an onslaught of web advertising, such as splashy “before and after” photos, online posts, and podcasts by social media influencers and others courted by surgery companies in a costly effort to attract business. Elite Body Sculpture, for instance, spent $43.9 million in “selling expenses” in 2024. That came to $3,130 per “customer acquisition,” according to the company’s SEC filings.
Under Federal Trade Commission guidelines, medical advertising must be “truthful, not deceptive, and backed up by competent and reliable scientific evidence,” according to Janice Kopec of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Any claims that are “suggested or reasonably implied” by ads also must be accurate. That includes the “net impression” conveyed by text and any charts, graphs, and other images, according to the FTC. The agency declined to elaborate.
Medical businesses are free to decide what documentation, if any, to share with the public. Most cosmetic surgery sites offer little or no such support for specific claims — such as recovery times or pain levels — on their websites.
“There is no requirement that the substantiation be made available to consumers, either on a website or upon demand,” Engle, who is also a former FTC official, said in an email.
The law permits “puffery,” or boastful statements that no person would likely take at face value, or that can’t be proved, such as, “‘You’ve tried all the rest, now try the best,’” Engle said.
Where to draw the line between acceptable boasts and unverified claims can be contentious.
Athēnix, a private equity-backed cosmetic surgery chain with locations in six cities, defended its use of terms such as “safer” and “better results” as puffery in response to a false advertising lawsuit filed against the company by Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in California in August 2022.
Spitzer argued that Athēnix touted its “micro-body-contouring” technique as “safer” than traditional liposuction and offered “outstanding results with less pain and downtime” without backing that up, according to the suit.
“There is no study or evidence to support these statements and no scientific consensus about the use of these new techniques,” Spitzer argued.
The parties settled the case in July 2023 when Athēnix agreed to pay $25,000 without admitting wrongdoing, court records show. Before the settlement, Athēnix argued that its use of terms such as “safer” and “better results” was “subjective” and “puffery” — and not false advertising.
While there’s little indication that local or state authorities are stepping up scrutiny of cosmetic surgery advertising, federal authorities have signaled they intend to crack down on dubious advertising claims made by drug manufacturers.
In a letter sent to drug companies in September, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary wrote that “deceptive advertising is sadly the current norm” on social media platforms and that the agency would no longer tolerate these violations.
‘Bad Advice’
To prove medical negligence, injured patients generally must show that their care fell below what a “reasonably prudent” doctor with similar training would have provided. In their defense, surgeons may argue that complications are a risk of any operation and that a poor outcome doesn’t mean the doctor was negligent.
Some lawsuits filed by injured patients add allegations that advertisements by surgery chains misled them, or that surgeons failed to fully explain possible risks of injuries, a requirement known in medical circles as informed consent.
Caitlin Meehan had such a case. She underwent a $15,000 AirSculpt procedure at Elite Body Sculpture’s clinic in Wayne, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia. She agreed to the surgery in March 2023, she said, because the company’s website described it as “Lunch Time Lipo,” according to a lawsuit she filed in late August. The suit alleges that the doctor she discussed the procedure with “maintained that there are no serious, life-threatening, lasting and/or permanent complications,” according to the suit.
During the procedure, however, gases became trapped beneath her skin, causing a widespread swelling called subcutaneous emphysema, according to the suit. Meehan was shocked to see her face, neck, and upper body severely swollen, causing her shortness of breath.
A friend who drove her to the appointment asked the staff to call an ambulance, but staff members said that wasn’t necessary, according to the suit. After an hour’s drive home, Meehan said her skin felt like it was burning and she called 911. She spent four days in the hospital recovering and remains scarred, according to the suit. The suit is pending, and the company has yet to file an answer in court.
Scott Hollenbeck, immediate past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, said recovering from liposuction in a day “seems unrealistic” given the bruising and swelling that can occur.
“The idea that you could return to work 24 hours after effective liposuction seems like extremely bad advice,” Hollenbeck said.
‘I Felt Horrible’
Ads that promised patients minimal discomfort also have come under attack in patient lawsuits.
More than 20 other medical malpractice cases reviewed by KFF Health News made similar allegations of unexpected pain during operations at cosmetic surgery chains using lidocaine for pain relief in “awake liposuction.”
One patient suing Elite Body Sculpture in Cook County, Illinois, alleged she “was crying due to [the] severe pain” of an operation in September 2023. She alleged the doctor said he couldn’t give her any more local anesthetic and pressed on with the procedure. The defendants have not filed an answer in court. The practice didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Engle, the former FTC official, said that while claims of discomfort are somewhat subjective, they still must be “truthful and substantiated,” such as supported by a “valid, reliable clinical study of patients’ experience.”
NBC News producer Jason Kane contributed to this report.
