Video Transcription:
Jed: We call this the water cooler story, the one that everyone’s talking about it. You’ve heard it, the California mother who is giving her eight-year-old daughter Botox injections so that she’ll do better in beauty pageants. Carole Mikita joins us with reaction to this one. It’s a pretty wild story.
Carole: It really is shocking, outrageous, dangerous, some of the reactions I heard today, Jed. I spoke with plastic surgeons and pageant directors. And a pageant is the reason, apparently, this mother says she is giving her daughter these treatments.
Kerry Campbell says she dreams of her daughter, Britney, who is eight, becoming a star. As she first told the British tabloid “The Sun” last year, “I know one day she will be a model, actress, or singer, and having these treatments now will ensure she stays looking younger and baby faced for longer.”
Kerry says she is an esthetician, a person who does cosmetic skin treatments. Is she licensed, and who is her Botox supplier? Utah doctors are asking.
Dr. Saltz: Like any other drug, it has risks. When you think that someone without adequate training and perhaps without any safety precautions is injecting in a child, to me it sounds criminal.
Carole: Not to mention morally and ethically questionable, doctors say, and so do the pageant directors. Utah’s Little Miss program places girls with older contestants and, together, they do service projects.
Renita: Little girls are beautiful just the way they are. Why would you ever want to change that? How can a Botox injection be beneficial in any way to a little girl?
Carole: Kerry Campbell says everyone is doing it, meaning other little girls in pageants. She says she waxes Britney’s legs and bikini line. How much physical and emotional pain are these treatments causing?
Dr. Saltz: I haven’t seen an eight-year-old, and I have children, that has any wrinkles that need to be paralyzed to start with. That’s just totally nonsense.
Carole: Doctors told us only physicians and nurses are trained and licensed to give Botox injections, and that every patient must know of the possible side effects and warnings and sign a consent form. They wonder about who’s supplying this mother with this drug, Jed.
Jed: Yeah. I hope that girl has a chance just to be a little girl.
Carole: Don’t you?
Jed: Yeah.
Carole: Thanks.
Jed: Thanks.
