Great excitement, my Urodeles are reproducing! We stare at each other through the glass each day and wonder what is going on, on the other side (Figure 1). Nature is taking its course inside the tank with two females and two males and spring in the …well not the air but the water. Professor Huang who keeps the daily watch with me spotted three suspicious objects amongst the plastic leaves (Figure 2) and after consulting with our specialist friends it is confirmed, we are going to have babies. I was rather shocked to be told that I had to remove the eggs from the parent's tank as apparently the eggs make a rather tasty change from the blood worms that provide the current staple diet for Mum and Dad. So now I have isolated the eggs and placed them in a supplementary tank and will closely observe the miracle of life developing within a transparent egg (Figure 3). For sake of clarification I should say that my Urodeles are Newts rather than Salamanders, the main difference being the proportion of the time they spend in or out of water. Nevertheless the unique nature of these creatures remains, the only vertebrates to regenerate limbs.1 And why do I care?
For the Reconstructive Plastic Surgeon, regeneration is the dream as compared to the Cosmetic Plastic Surgeon who puts rejuvenation on the ‘pedestal’. It is part of my daily plastic surgical practice to see the devastation of trauma, disease and oncological surgery. To restore form and function is a truly noble goal but whilst we appreciate what we do, the reality is that many do not understand what Plastic Surgery is about. Hence the change of the name of the specialty to Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. But we can never let up in the process of positively promoting who we are and what we do, in a sensitive and professional way. This is done, not for ourselves but for our patients so that we can obtain a fair and proportionate amount of the available resource to give them the best chance of living a full and fulfilling life. Whilst I study my Urodeles and dream of the goal of regeneration, the reality is that I have patients such as the two young girls shown in Figure 4. One lost her left hand in a fire and the other lost both her feet from frost bite in the worst winter in the history of contemporary China. When I look into the management of amputations in children much of the recent experience comes from mine injuries in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Somalia and also conflicts in Sierra Leone, Iraq and other regions of human inhumanity. We each have to make our professional choice as to how we best use our skills and expertise. JPRAS will strive to live up to its goal as `An International Journal of Surgical Reconstruction'. The scope is broad and the applications diverse and this is reflected in the rich variety of papers, cases and communications in this issue. The world has to know that we are far more than ‘nip and tuck’ experts. For us to be effective in what we do, we have to be effective in letting the world know who and what we are. The following editorials in this issue focus on content and communication and have a valuable message for our global readership.
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