LAS VEGAS, NV - Just days after French surgeons stole headlines by performing the world's first zero-gravity operation, a Las Vegas surgeon has performed the first breast augmentation in low orbit. Dr. Hugh Unns, the plastic surgeon of choice of Vegas' stars of the Pole and Champagne room, cited the benefits of low gravity surgery during an interview this morning.

According to Dr Unns, "The science of breast augmentation has failed to keep up with many of the other procedures we perform. Our clinical expertise in, for instance, procedures that suck fat from womens's rear in order to inject that fat back into their lips, has advanced incredibly over the past decade.

Experts claim the American team only barely beat Italian doctors to the high-altitude procedure.

"The Italian team was a very close contender in this race. They are truly devoted to this noble strand of science and deserve special mention. They are a credit to the international scientific community," said industry specialist Wayne Carman.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, appearing publically with fellow Republican politician Mary Carey for the sixth time this week, praised the Nevada teams' spirit of innovation.

"Imagine if the music industry had stopped innovating at the 8-track?" Schwarzenegger asked audiences at a fundraiser for Orphans Without Nosejobs in Oakland. "Try and imagine if the automobile industry never returned to making large, inefficient engines to satiate this country's desire for enormous vehicles after the 1973 U.S. gas crisis... A world without humvees is a very sad place indeed ... miserable, yes, but not so miserable as a world without scientists like Dr. Unns."

According Dr. Unns, his team first successfully performed breast augmentations on mice in his bathtub in preparation for this historic procedure.

"It wasn't the French, but ourselves who first initiated low-gravity surgery," Unns told Brainsnap. "On June 14th in 2001, we successfully enlarged all six breasts of an unfortunately very flat chested common house mouse (mus musculus). Since her operation, she gone on to live a fulfilled and happy life, receiving much more attention from her male cage mates.

"More importantly, she proved our initial hypothesis that she would experience a much easier recovery post opp than most gravity burdened human patients experience here on Earth. The benefits to my clients requiring unnaturally large breast augmentation is, well, significant."

"A Shoe-In for the Nobel"

Dr. Unns work is already rumored to be a odds-on favorite among bookies and gamblers for the next Nobel Prize Championship in Stockholm.

According to one science commentator: "Look at what's won the Nobel Prize for Medicine lately: some wishy-washy researchers who discovered some new type of bacteria and some boring folks who discovered how smelling works ... I mean, come on! Our debt to Dr. Unns' work will be remembered for generations..."