The med spa charged $100 for the procedure. My disposable supply cost alone — microneedling tip plus PRP tube — is $275 per patient. They were charging less than half of just my supply cost. That math doesn't work unless you're reusing single-use equipment between patients.
There's been an update to a horrifying story I've been following for years: the New Mexico VIP med spa where patients contracted HIV during PRP microneedling procedures (commonly marketed as a "vampire facial"). A third patient has now been identified.
This is a case I want every patient considering aesthetic procedures to know about. It's a textbook example of what happens when untrained operators do medical procedures, and how the warning signs were visible in the pricing the entire time.
In 2018, the New Mexico Public Health Department investigated and shut down a VIP med spa after identifying unsafe practices. They recommended that anyone who had procedures at the facility during that time period get tested for blood-borne pathogens — specifically hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV.
Initial follow-up identified two patients who contracted HIV at the facility. The recent update: a third patient has now been identified as having contracted HIV at the same med spa.
This is a horrifying outcome for three individuals whose only "mistake" was choosing a med spa they didn't adequately vet.
The procedure these patients had is most commonly known as a vampire facial — though that's a trademarked marketing term and most clinicians just call it PRP microneedling.
The procedure has two components:
The microneedling head with the needles on it is sterile and single-use only. It comes packaged sterile, is used on one patient, and is then discarded. That's a core, non-negotiable infection control standard.
The investigation hasn't publicly confirmed every detail of the transmission mechanism, but the pricing tells the story.
But here's the part that really matters:
That math doesn't work unless you're cutting corners somewhere. And the most plausible place to cut corners on PRP microneedling is reusing the disposable single-use needling tips between patients.
If a tip is used on Patient A who has HIV, and then reused on Patient B — that's a direct mechanism for blood-borne pathogen transmission. The needles literally carry blood from one patient into the next.
That is, in my honest opinion, the most likely explanation for how three patients contracted HIV at this specific facility.
Last fall, the owner of the med spa was convicted on five felony counts. She pled guilty to all five — one of which was practicing medicine without a license.
In October, she was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
This is appropriate. But it doesn't undo what happened to the patients who contracted HIV, all of whom now live with a chronic medical condition that requires lifelong treatment.
This isn't an isolated bad actor in an otherwise functional system. It's an extreme example of a pattern that exists across the aesthetic medicine market.
I want to repeat what I said about medical tourism pricing: prices dramatically below market are a red flag.
In legitimate medical practice, the costs of doing things safely — proper supplies, proper sterilization, proper training, proper supervision, proper facility — set a floor on what a procedure can cost. If someone is charging well below that floor, they're cutting corners somewhere. The corners they cut may not be visible to you as a patient — until you're the one who pays the price.
This applies to:
The same principle applies up and down the price scale. Cheap isn't always dangerous — but dangerous is often cheap.
The owner of the New Mexico med spa was practicing medicine without a license. This is exactly what concerned me in my post about how doctors can technically practice outside their specialty, and it's in the same family of issues as the California ruling against nurse practitioners calling themselves "doctor".
Before any procedure that involves needles, lasers, prescription medications, or anything beyond skincare:
If the answer to any of these is vague, evasive, or "trust us" — leave.
If you're ever having a procedure that involves equipment marked single-use — needles, microneedling tips, IV tubing, anything in contact with blood or sterile body cavities — you should be able to see the staff opening a new sterile package right before your procedure.
If they're bringing equipment in from another room, claiming "everything's been sterilized," or anything else that doesn't involve opening a fresh sealed package in front of you — that's worth questioning before you allow them to proceed.
If you had any procedure at the VIP med spa in New Mexico during 2018 — and especially a vampire facial / PRP microneedling — please:
The public health authorities are specifically encouraging this re-testing because the third patient was identified well after initial public health follow-up. Don't assume "I was tested in 2018 and was fine" means you're in the clear.
I want to be clear: most med spas are not like this one. The med spa industry has real legitimate operators doing safe, valuable work. But the industry also has structural vulnerabilities:
When these vulnerabilities stack with an operator willing to cut corners, you get cases like this one.
A third patient has contracted HIV at a New Mexico VIP med spa that was offering vampire facials for $100 when the disposable supply cost alone is around $275 per patient. The almost-certain mechanism: reuse of single-use microneedling tips between patients. The owner is now serving three and a half years for practicing medicine without a license, among other felonies.
Lessons for every aesthetic patient:
If you had a procedure at this New Mexico facility in 2018, please go get retested — even if you tested negative previously.
We need patients to be empowered consumers in this market, because the regulatory system isn't reliably catching this kind of operator until people are already harmed.