Jeremy Laurance: 'Some aspects of cosmetic surgery defy belief. Designer vaginas?'

I love cosmetic surgeons. They have such tales to tell. I once sat next to one on a flight and he kept me rapt for hours with stories of human vanity and how demand differs around the world (buttock implants outrank breast implants in Latin America, since you ask).

So the annual spat between cosmetic surgeons and the wilder shores of their industry, which broke out last week, is always fun. This year, it was models with "anatomically impossible" breasts being used to lure women into surgery that has roused the ire of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.

The association – properly qualified, traditional gents in the main – disapproved of an ad used by a London clinic showing a woman in a bikini, head thrown back, whose generous top half did not match her slender bottom half.

The surgeons claimed the picture had been digitally manipulated to emphasise the lady's assets. Well, blow me – it's not the first time advertisers have sought to improve on nature. But anatomically impossible? Surely not. Careers have been built on unfeasibly large breasts – Katie Price (aka Jordan) and Pamela Anderson among them. I'm sure the surgeons have nothing but the best interests of women at heart, but they are competing for their custom, and that makes me uncomfortable.

On the other side of the fence, there is widespread public disapproval of women (and men) who risk the scalpel to enhance their appearance. I shared it once, but as I age, and those around me age, I've grown more sympathetic. Marie Helvin, the 55-year-old former model, said recently that she was dead against cosmetic surgery and could not understand why anyone would have it. Neither could I if they looked as good as you, Marie. But few of us do.

Some aspects of the industry defy belief, however. Channel 4 made a film about "designer vaginas" – remodelled genitals. The practice is not as rare as you might think. The producer asked her GP about it, and he replied that he had had half a dozen requests for referrals in as many months. This is baffling. How should a good-looking vagina look? How could anyone know? But here's a truth about cosmetic surgery – beauty is in the eye not of the beholder, but of the one who is on view.

Congratulations to researchers at the University of Southampton. They are to test heart-attack patients – at least, the ones who survive – to see if they genuinely have out-of-body experiences looking down at themselves as they are being resuscitated, as many claim.

Ingeniously, the researchers are positioning shelves above the beds carrying pictures that can only be seen from the ceiling. The ability to describe these, they say, will distinguish those whose "minds" are genuinely hovering above their bodies and those who imagine they are.

But will it? My betting is that some curious paramedic will find a ladder, take a peek at the hidden pictures, and gossip about it with the nurses. Patients will overhear – and an idea as incomprehensible as most theoretical physics will have its day.