Your body, your self, your surgeon, his Instagram

PLUS: A high-stakes Covid experiment, and an Operation Warp Speed for climate. View this email in your browser  |  Manage newsletter subscriptions  01.24.21 Breast implants. Butt lifts. Liposuction. Cosmetic surgery is out there in the public sphere—discussed, analyzed, praised. Its popularity has soared amid the pandemic. The rapper Iggy Azalea rhapsodized about her breast implants to an E! News reporter: "I love them so much I had to talk about them." Cosmetic surgeons are out there, too, slicing abdomens, removing fat, and showing off their artistic skills to thousands of followers on social media. The writer Katherine Laidlaw learned about one of these celebrity cosmetic surgeons, a Toronto doctor named Martin Jugenberg, who goes by the digital sobriquet Dr 6ix. Jugenberg livestreams surgeries on Instagram, providing information on the process and commenting on his anesthetized patients while head-bopping to music in Dr 6ix-branded scrubs. Some of Jugenberg's patients have not been pleased with this entertainment. They felt they had been pressured to allow their bodies to be put on display. Several filed suit, saying he had used their images without their informed consent. What had felt like an empowering decision about their own bodies felt afterward like a violation. One woman who saw the video after her surgery said hearing Jugenberg critique her body made her feel like a piece of meat. "I was totally embarrassed. He had me sliced open and was sticking a cannula in my body. That wasn't enough? Why was he shaming me in front of everybody?" In her story, Laidlaw talks to these women and attempts to untangle what happens when your doctor is also an influencer. Vera Titunik | Features Editor, WIRED   BACKCHANNEL | 18-MINUTE READ Your Body, Your Self, Your Surgeon, His Instagram BY KATHERINE LAIDLAW Social media gave the Real Dr. 6ix a stage on which to show off liposuctions and breast lifts. But when cosmetic surgery becomes entertainment, who owns the story?   BACKCHANNEL | 16-MINUTE READ Covid, Schools, and the High-Stakes Experiment No One Wanted BY SANDRA UPSON Reopening in the fall was a massive gamble. At one high-poverty elementary school, navigating the risks paid off.   IDEAS | 3-MINUTE READ Climate Change Needs an Operation Warp Speed BY CLIVE THOMPSON If the Covid vaccine push has proved anything, it's that big government works.   BOOK EXCERPT | 15-MINUTE READ Palantir's God's-Eye View of Afghanistan BY ANNIE JACOBSEN The company's software can sift through enormous amounts of data, and those metrics can be used to make life-or-death decisions.   IDEAS | 5-MINUTE READ If Covid-19 Did Start With a Lab Leak, Would We Ever Know? BY ROGER PIELKE JR. The two major investigations into the origins of the pandemic are compromised by potential conflicts of interest. Those problems need to be fixed—fast.   END OF AN ERA | 5-MINUTE READ An Internet Without Trump BY JASON PARHAM With Donald Trump no longer the heart of online discourse, there's room for a powerful shift. GET WIRED Winter Sale! Get 1 year of WIRED access for $10 $5. Tech news and analysis you won't find anywhere else. Subscribe now.         This e-mail was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or manage your newsletter subscriptions