When we think of plastic surgery we think of facelifts, tummy tucks, and breast implants, but that is its more modern application, it has traditionally had a more basic and transforming power, to give new life to those who are born with such afflictions as cleft palates and birthmarks.
They can have a huge impact on the lives of the young people who get them. Birthmarks can even be lethal; which is why two of the country's leading plastic surgeons are finding faster more effective ways to treat them.
They have set up a National Research Institute at Lower Hutt hospital and they are trying to raising ten million dollars for their work.
Swee Tan is a plastic surgeon who transformed the life of Aimee Cornish. He removed her strawberry birthmark.
“Everyone knew me not because I was popular but because I was the girl with the birthmark,” says Amie Cornish.
Aimee had to live with it for more than a decade.
It took five laser treatments and an operation before it was gone.
“He's so skilled at his work and he just wants all children to live to their potential in life and I think that is really lovely,” says Aimee.
About 15 percent of people have birthmarks, and surgery has been the traditional way of removing them.
But Swee and other leading plastic surgeons now believe it is time to take a new and more enlightened tack.
So Swee and his colleagues have headed into the lab. They have already discovered what causes birthmarks, stems cells.
The stems cells that cause cancer are similar to those that cause birth marks.
And the more they find out about stems cells that cause birth marks the more they find out about those that cause cancer.
What they are learning about birthmark stem cells could not only help in the fight against cancer but for many other diseases, and afflictions.
For example in the future it could help a boy like Carlos. He was born with the left side of his face paralysed, and he couldn't smile.
Swee Tan had to operate to remedy that. It is another life transformed by surgery, but again Swee Tan thinks we can do better. In the future he would like to be able to treat cases like Carlos using stem cells, and grow the parts he was missing in his cheek.
But those who will benefit first off from the research are those with birth marks. And the impact cannot be underestimated.