The story provides a catalogue of the plastic surgery required to effect the transformation and a price-list of the treatments for readers to gasp at.

That it took a billion pounds in oil money to effect this transformation attracts critical commentary.

In organic chemistry, reagents are compounds or mixtures, usually composed of inorganic or small organic molecules, that are used to effect a transformation on an organic substrate.

Extensive efforts on the part of many laboratories eventually led to the discovery of a pseudomonas microbe that efficiently effected that transformation.