The Dark Side of the Brazilian Butt Lift Boom

In September 2024, a 33-year-old mother named Alice Webb went to a pop-up beauty clinic for a procedure called a non-surgical Brazilian butt lift, or BBL. The treatment involved injecting large amounts of a gel called dermal filler into her buttocks. She planned to be home in time to pick up her five children from school. Instead, Alice died less than 24 hours later, becoming the first person in the UK known to have died from this type of procedure.

Alice's death has drawn attention to the UK's booming cosmetic injection industry. Treatments like dermal fillers and Botox are now sold in beauty salons, rented offices, and even hotel rooms. Safety experts say this easy access puts people at serious risk. An official investigation will be held in the autumn to find out exactly what caused Alice's death.

Another woman, Joanne from South Wales, had a non-surgical BBL at a pop-up clinic in June 2024. She was injected with a full litre of filler and soon ended up in the hospital with a dangerous infection called sepsis. Two years later, she still has scars from the treatment. 'I just wanted a peachy bum,' she said. 'I should have turned and ran.'

A third woman, Louise Moller, had a similar procedure in October 2023 and was rushed to hospital four days later with sepsis. Surgeons had to remove dead tissue from her buttock to stop the infection from spreading. From her hospital bed, she called her mother and said, 'Mum, I think I'm going to die.' Her mother tried to report the case to police, but two different forces kept passing responsibility to each other.

The practitioner behind both Joanne's and Louise's procedures was a man named Ricky Sawyer. A journalist investigated him by going undercover as a client at his clinic. Sawyer offered to inject a litre of filler and handed out prescription medicines without a doctor's order. A plastic surgeon who reviewed the footage called these actions 'shocking' and 'very dangerous,' and in 2025 Sawyer was legally banned from practicing.

Cosmetic treatments were once used mainly by older, wealthier people wanting to look younger. But social media and reality TV shows have made them popular with much younger audiences. The safety group Save Face says shows like Love Island and celebrities like the Kardashians made bigger lips and fuller faces seem trendy. Now these treatments are often marketed as normal beauty routines rather than medical procedures.

Ashton Collins, director of Save Face, says this is dangerous. When treatments look like ordinary beauty services, people focus on price and convenience rather than safety. 'People might be getting their nails or eyebrows done and see these treatments as an extension of that,' she says. Many people don't even know that Botox is a prescription-only medicine.

The UK is one of the least-regulated cosmetic injection markets in Europe. Under current law, anyone can learn to inject dermal fillers and offer treatments to the public — no medical degree needed. In France and Austria, only doctors can perform these procedures. In the UK, there is no official body that oversees non-medical cosmetic practitioners.

Researcher Dr. Alexander Zargaran found nearly 20,000 Botox practitioners in the UK in 2025, up from just 3,500 in 2023. He also found that Botox was more available in poorer communities, but that those same areas had fewer medically trained practitioners. This means people in more vulnerable situations may be more likely to receive unsafe treatments.

More than ten years ago, an expert review called the Keogh Review warned that dermal fillers were 'a crisis waiting to happen.' It called for stricter rules and better training for practitioners. The government set up a voluntary system, but most practitioners chose not to follow it. Experts say this approach failed to protect the public.

The UK government is now developing new rules. In England, ministers plan to introduce a licensing system, and the highest-risk procedures like non-surgical BBLs may be restricted to trained healthcare professionals. Scotland passed a law to limit these procedures to regulated clinics and ban them for people under 18, expected to take effect in September 2027. Wales and Northern Ireland have not yet announced similar plans.

Campaigners say new laws are a step forward, but warn much work remains before they take effect. Laws still need to be written in detail, and local authorities will need enough resources to enforce them. 'People assume there must be somebody regulating these practitioners,' says Collins. 'Very often that simply isn't the case.' For families like Alice Webb's, the hope is that change will finally come before more people are seriously harmed.