Fw: Response to: Silicone Implants making a comeback

[Guest guest]

From: " S. J. Attis (by way of ilena rose) " <sjattis@...>

Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 12:47 AM

Subject: Response to: Silicone Implants making a comeback

> Ilena, This is a copy of the letter I just sent to the editor of the

> National Post. Thought you might be interested in posting it.

>

> S. Joyce Attis - Breast Implant Line of Canada

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: S. J. Attis <sjattis@...>letters@...

> <letters@...>Date: Thursday, June 21, 2001 5:05 PM

> Subject: Silicone Implants making a comeback

> I am writing in response to Sharon Kirkey's article of June 16, 2001

> entitled " Silicone implants making a comeback " .

>

> As a co-founder and spokesperson for Breast implant Line of Canada ( a

> support group for people with breast implants or for those considering

> having the surgery), I take umbrage at this most unfair portrayal of such

> a contentious issue that affects so many women, their partners, children

> and employers.

>

> Since we began in 1992, I have taken more than 10,000 calls from women

> whose health has been adversely affected by these faulty medical devices.

> The statement by Dr. Walter s that he is now doing something that he

> finds " totally mind-boggling " is, in itself totally mind boggling.

>

> What does he mean? Is he surprised that marketing efforts by

unscrupulous

> manufacturers are luring unsuspecting and naive young women into his

> office?

>

> Or is his mind boggled by the fact that he continues to implant women

with

> devices that have never been proven safe?

>

> The article says: " The re-emergence of silicone is being fuelled by

> several large studies that found no link between the implants and serious

> disease... " My queries to this statement are:

> * who funded these studies?

> * are these " studies " recent studies or are they

> quoting from a compilation of studies which were undertaken many years

> ago? * are brain cancer and respiratory-tract cancer not

> considered serious diseases? (please refer to the reporter's quotes from

> the US National Cancer Institute's study)*

> If connective tissue diseases, scleroderma, lupus, etc. are not caused

by

> silicone gel breast implants then why did implant manufacturers place

> implant recipients in a grid based on such diseases and then disburse

> payments to them?

>

> I find it curious that these " newer " implants are considered safe and

will

> mimic the consistency of the first round of silicone gel breast implants.

> Where is the proof of safety? Or will those women being implanted be

> studied for a decade or two only to find the results of what horrible

> health conditions they may encounter?

>

> In 1972, I was a recipient of one of the earliest silicone gel breast

> implants. Within five years, I began having health problems not normally

> seen in a woman in her mid to late 20's. I have since been diagnosed with

> numerous conditions some of which include: arthralgias, myalgias,

> alopecia, fibromyalgia, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

>

> I present with symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. I had a spinal

> fusion and a hysterectomy. I was recently diagnosed with diabetes. It

> may be true that many people have some of these conditions. How many

> people have all of these conditions? I contend that those who have

> diagnoses similar to mine have them because of the one factor we have in

> common - silicone gel breast implants.

>

> It is incumbent upon the National Post to report in a fair and factual

> way. How many Canadian women did Ms. Kirkey interview for this article?

>

> I, for one, am available to discuss this matter.

> S. Joyce Attis Breast Implant Line of Canada 416-636-6618

>

>

> ORIGINAL ARTICLE;

>

> Silicone implants making a comeback

>

> Years of alarm washed away by new research and a gel like Gummi Bears

> Sharon Kirkey National Post

> Glenn Lowson, National Post

> Dr. Walter s says women are once again

> requesting silicone breast implants following medical studies that found

>

> no link between the implants and serious

> disease.

> After removing 629 silicone implants from the breasts of frightened women

> during the past 10 years, Dr. Walter s is now doing something he

finds

> " totally mind-boggling. "

>

> He is putting them back in.

>

> Nine years after silicone breast implants were removed from the Canadian

> market amid panic the devices caused everything from joint pain to cancer,

> they appear to be making a comeback.

>

> " You would never have believed it, " says Dr. s, a professor of

plastic

> surgery at the University of Toronto and an international expert on

> silicone breast implants.

>

> " After all the stuff that's gone on, after having been through all this

> controversy and gone to court as a witness on all these cases and all this

> research we've done, [silicone] implants are back on the market again. It

> just boggles my mind to no end. "

>

> The re-emergence of silicone is being fuelled by several large studies

that

> found no link between the implants and serious disease, and by a new

> generation of silicone implants that contain thicker and firmer gels than

> their older, more fluid cousins -- and are thus likelier to hold their

> shape should they rupture.

>

> " The older silicone implants had a semi-liquid silicone in there. If you

> cut them, the silicone gel would sort of pour out, " says Dr. Claudio De

> Lorenzi, a Kitchener plastic surgeon and past president of the Canadian

> Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. " If they broke, they would be a

> little harder to clean out, because this gel is quite sticky -- it sticks

> to instruments, it sticks to gloves. "

>

> The new " cohesive " gel implants, which also have a thicker shell, look

more

> like the inside of a Gummi Bear. " We cut one in half, and it doesn't pour

> out. It doesn't stick to anything, " Dr. De Lorenzi says.

>

> For now, silicone breast implants are available in Canada through special

> access only, meaning surgeons must apply to Health Canada for permission

to

> use them in specific cases, a regulatory hurdle doctors say requires

> little more than filling out a few forms. Health Canada has received 400

> requests for silicone implants since the government decided, in December,

> 1999, to once again make them available under special access.

>

> " From our point of view, the weight of the scientific evidence was very

> strong then, " says Beth Pieterson, director of Health Canada's medical

> devices bureau. " There were three very significant reports -- two from

the

> U.S., one >from the United Kingdom -- that [found] there was no

connection

> between [the implants] and some of the diseases there was uncertainty

with

> before. So we felt we could release them. "

>

> None of the silicone implants have been licensed in Canada for general

use.

> But some surgeons are convinced it is only a matter of time.

>

> The truth, Dr. s says, is women are asking for them.

>

> " There was so much controversy, I would have thought women would be much

> more hesitant to get back into gel implants. But they're not, " says Dr.

> s, who was the principal investigator of the first large-scale study

> of its kind to rule out any links between silicone and diseases of the

> immune system.

>

> " A lot of the women who we took [silicone] gel implants out of, because

> they were scared of them, and we replaced them with saline implants,

ended

> up having suboptimal results. Now they're coming back to get the gel ones

> put back in. I've got an actress from Los Angeles who's coming up here to

> get it done because they're more easily available here than they are in

> the States. "

>

> What makes silicone attractive to some women, surgeons say, is that no

> other filling comes as close to the look and feel of a natural breast.

>

> Saline implants -- the only type available in Canada between 1995 and 1999

> -- have a different viscosity or thickness. Think of a water balloon, Dr.

> De Lorenzi says.

>

> " A saline implant is basically a silicone-rubber shell that's filled with

> salt water. It doesn't move like breast tissue. It doesn't feel the same. "

> And it can be prone to wrinkling or folds when used in thin women who

have

> very little breast tissue or fat tissue to begin with, giving the breast

> the appearance of a scallop shell.

>

> The new cohesive gel implants, which are made by McGhan Medical

Corporation

> -- one of the manufacturers that faced lawsuits during the earlier

silicone

> scare -- " feel good and look good, " Dr. De Lorenzi says. " These are

> excellent for women who are really thin who want to have a B cup or a

> small C. If those girls had saline implants, you would see the ripples

> through the skin. "

>

> Silicone implants are also " indicated, " he says, for women who have

> experienced a significant amount of " deflation " after giving birth, which

> is one of the main reasons women seek breast enhancement.

>

> And if the shell should rupture, the sticky gel would not be released into

> the breast tissue, " because it's all really thick gel. It just stays

there.

> It's like the old, first-generation [silicone] implant, " Dr. s says.

>

> The enthusiasm is a seismic shift from the mood just a decade ago, when

> reports began to surface linking implants with such systemic autoimmune

> problems as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and scleroderma.

>

> In July, 1991, six months after a national U.S. television news program

> aired a special report about the dangers of silicone breast implants, an

> Alabama jury awarded US$5.4-million to a woman who had traces of silicone

> in her lymphatic system. By December of that year, more than 100

> individual lawsuits had been filed against Dow Corning, the leading

> manufacturer of silicone-gel implants, while a special panel struck by

the

> U.S. Food and Drug Administration began reviewing the safety data -- only

> to find manufacturers had failed to provide sufficient evidence the

> devices were safe.

>

> In January, 1992, the FDA ordered doctors to stop using silicone-gel

> implants until studies on their safety could be completed. The same year,

> manufacturers pulled their implants off the Canadian market. (The

implants

> were still available, however, through special access between 1992 and

> 1995, before they were removed from the market entirely.)

>

> The moves provoked a flurry of liability action in Canada and the United

> States. In 1995, U.S. breast implant maker Bristol-Myers Squibb reached a

> $28-million out-of-court settlement in a class-action suit involving women

> in Ontario and Quebec; a global class-action settlement, affecting all

> manufacturers of breast implants, resulted in a settlement of

> US$4.2-billion in 1994.

>

> The settlements were driven by the " rupture phenomenon, " Dr. s says.

> " Many of the implant companies had sent letters out with the implants to

> patients saying, 'Rest assured, these things will last your lifetime,' "

> says Dr. s, who has been involved as an expert witness for

> manufacturers and plastic surgeons in about 25 liability cases.

>

> " In fact, some of the companies actually had done their own work and found

> out they were not lasting, they were losing strength and rupturing over

> time. They had not been totally upfront. "

>

> But the manufacturers were never willing to accept their products caused

> serious health problems.

>

> " And now we have all this new evidence accumulated that there doesn't seem

> to be any causation issue, " Dr. says.

>

> Last year, in what is considered a watershed report, a panel of experts

> convened by the U.S. Institute of Medicine concluded that while silicone

> implants frequently rupture and leak, potentially causing pain,

> disfigurement and repeat surgery, women with gel implants were no

likelier

> than other women to develop serious autoimmune disorders.

>

> Other studies -- including a large study in the United Kingdom, the

Harvard

> Nurses Epidemiological Study in 1995 and a study by Mayo Clinic

> investigators in 1994 -- found no evidence linking silicone implants with

> connective tissue diseases and other problems.

>

> The cumulative message was the same, Dr. De Lorenzi says: " The health

> issues were not the issues of brain cancer or problems like that. They

> were the issues we always talked about -- capsular contracture [where

scar

> tissue forms around the implant, causing the breast to harden], [the

fact]

> implants will eventually break, all those sorts of things. But people

> didn't get autoimmune disease, they didn't get arthritis, they didn't get

> the other things that attorneys were claiming. "

>

> Still, thousands of women rushed to get their implants out " because they

> assumed they had a problem, or else why would [governments] have banned

> them, " Dr. s says.

>

> " And then as we took out a lot of the implants, it turned out they had

> ruptured with a pretty high frequency, and that added more fuel to the

> flame. But there were no immune changes in the body. We've looked at the

> antibodies, we've looked at several hundred patients. Ruptured implants

do

> not cause a woman's immune system to get hyperactive. "

>

> Still, not everyone is buying into silicone's sudden redemption.

>

> For one thing, while a recent study by the U.S National Cancer Institute

> found women who had silicone breast implants were less likely to die >from

> cancer, immune disorders and other diseases than women in the general

> population, they were two to three times likelier to die from brain cancer

> -- and nearly twice as likely to die from suicide, pneumonia and

> emphysema. There was also an increased risk of respiratory-tract cancer.

>

> In a news release, the researchers speculated the higher risks for brain

> and respiratory cancer may be the result of " chance findings " or " factors

> common to women who choose to have implants, " such as smoking, and not

> exposure to silicone. Still, even the scientists involved acknowledge

> " there have been suggestions that implants may have an effect on

> neurologic pathways, " though the evidence has been conflicting.

>

> But leaving aside the issue of whether silicone causes systemic disease,

> " we know that the gel implants have been associated with a variety of

> local complications, " says Vancouver lawyer Klein, who is involved

> in a class-action lawsuit against breast- implant manufacturers that

> involves about 2,000 Canadian women.

>

> The complications, he says, include rupture, capsular contractures,

> scarring and inflammation.

>

> " The silicone implants were on the market for about 30 years and went

> through a host of combinations and changes with respect to the shells,

> their thickness, the viscosity of the gel inside, " Mr. Klein says. But

> they all suffered >from " gel bleed, " he says. " It didn't matter what

> mixture the manufacturers put inside, it didn't matter how thick the

> shells were made. They all leaked silicone.

>

> " It surprises me that after the history of disease and local complication

> problems silicone gel implants had, that cosmetic surgeons would even

> consider putting them back in again, " Mr. Klein says.

>

> " This is a cosmetic product. It's not a life-saving product. "

>

> In Washington, D.C., the National Center for Policy Research for Women and

> Families says studies such as the National Cancer Institute report raise

> more alarming questions than they answer.

>

> " These articles are a wake-up call for the almost 300,000 women and

> teenagers who plan to get breast implants this year, " the group's head,

> Diane Zuckerman, told MSNBC this week in an online report dubbed " The

> Return of Silicone Valley. "

>

> Experts such as Dr. s would argue with such critics about many

things,

> but not the numbers. Breast augmentation is more popular than ever.

>

> Whether silicone ever again becomes the implant of choice for Canadian

> women seeking breast enhancement remains to be seen. Ninety-five per cent

> of all breast implants used between 1963 and 1992 were silicone-gel

> implants.

>

> " I don't know if [silicone] will ever come back to that kind of

> popularity, " Dr. s says. " But it's certainly coming back. "

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Good Morning Dear Friends:

This is old, but it is still very important.

Love you all.............Lea

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>

> Silicone Implants making a comeback

> > I am writing in response to Sharon Kirkey's article of June 16, 2001

> > entitled " Silicone implants making a comeback " .

> >

> > As a co-founder and spokesperson for Breast implant Line of Canada

( a

> > support group for people with breast implants or for those

considering

> > having the surgery), I take umbrage at this most unfair portrayal of

> such

> > a contentious issue that affects so many women, their partners,

> children

> > and employers.

> >

> > Since we began in 1992, I have taken more than 10,000 calls from

women

> > whose health has been adversely affected by these faulty medical

> devices.

> > The statement by Dr. Walter s that he is now doing something

that

> he

> > finds " totally mind-boggling " is, in itself totally mind boggling.

> >

> > What does he mean? Is he surprised that marketing efforts by

> unscrupulous

> > manufacturers are luring unsuspecting and naive young women into his

> > office?

> >

> > Or is his mind boggled by the fact that he continues to implant

women

> with

> > devices that have never been proven safe?

> >

> > The article says: " The re-emergence of silicone is being fuelled by

> > several large studies that found no link between the implants and

> serious

> > disease... " My queries to this statement are:

> > * who funded these studies?

> > * are these " studies " recent studies or are they

> > quoting from a compilation of studies which were undertaken many

years

> > ago? * are brain cancer and respiratory-tract cancer not

> > considered serious diseases? (please refer to the reporter's quotes

from

> > the US National Cancer Institute's study)*

> > If connective tissue diseases, scleroderma, lupus, etc. are not

caused

> by

> > silicone gel breast implants then why did implant manufacturers

place

> > implant recipients in a grid based on such diseases and then disburse

> > payments to them?

> >

> > I find it curious that these " newer " implants are considered safe

and

> will

> > mimic the consistency of the first round of silicone gel breast

> implants.

> > Where is the proof of safety? Or will those women being implanted be

> > studied for a decade or two only to find the results of what

horrible

> > health conditions they may encounter?

> >

> > In 1972, I was a recipient of one of the earliest silicone gel

breast

> > implants. Within five years, I began having health problems not

> normally

> > seen in a woman in her mid to late 20's. I have since been diagnosed

> with

> > numerous conditions some of which include: arthralgias, myalgias,

> > alopecia, fibromyalgia, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

> >

> > I present with symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. I had a

> spinal

> > fusion and a hysterectomy. I was recently diagnosed with diabetes.

It

> > may be true that many people have some of these conditions. How

many

> > people have all of these conditions? I contend that those who have

> > diagnoses similar to mine have them because of the one factor we

have

> in

> > common - silicone gel breast implants.

> >

> > It is incumbent upon the National Post to report in a fair and

factual

> > way. How many Canadian women did Ms. Kirkey interview for this

> article?

> >

> > I, for one, am available to discuss this matter.

> > S. Joyce Attis Breast Implant Line of Canada 416-636-6618

> >

> >

> > ORIGINAL ARTICLE;

> >

> > Silicone implants making a comeback

> >

> > Years of alarm washed away by new research and a gel like Gummi

Bears

> > Sharon Kirkey National Post

> > Glenn Lowson, National Post

> > Dr. Walter s says women are once again

> > requesting silicone breast implants following medical studies that

found

> >

> > no link between the implants and serious

> > disease.

> > After removing 629 silicone implants from the breasts of frightened

> women

> > during the past 10 years, Dr. Walter s is now doing something he

> finds

> > " totally mind-boggling. "

> >

> > He is putting them back in.

> >

> > Nine years after silicone breast implants were removed from the

Canadian

> > market amid panic the devices caused everything from joint pain to

> cancer,

> > they appear to be making a comeback.

> >

> > " You would never have believed it, " says Dr. s, a professor of

> plastic

> > surgery at the University of Toronto and an international expert on

> > silicone breast implants.

> >

> > " After all the stuff that's gone on, after having been through all

this

> > controversy and gone to court as a witness on all these cases and all

> this

> > research we've done, [silicone] implants are back on the market

again.

> It

> > just boggles my mind to no end. "

> >

> > The re-emergence of silicone is being fuelled by several large

studies

> that

> > found no link between the implants and serious disease, and by a new

> > generation of silicone implants that contain thicker and firmer gels

> than

> > their older, more fluid cousins -- and are thus likelier to hold

their

> > shape should they rupture.

> >

> > " The older silicone implants had a semi-liquid silicone in there. If

you

> > cut them, the silicone gel would sort of pour out, " says Dr. Claudio

De

> > Lorenzi, a Kitchener plastic surgeon and past president of the

Canadian

> > Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. " If they broke, they would be

a

> > little harder to clean out, because this gel is quite sticky -- it

> sticks

> > to instruments, it sticks to gloves. "

> >

> > The new " cohesive " gel implants, which also have a thicker shell,

look

> more

> > like the inside of a Gummi Bear. " We cut one in half, and it doesn't

> pour

> > out. It doesn't stick to anything, " Dr. De Lorenzi says.

> >

> > For now, silicone breast implants are available in Canada through

> special

> > access only, meaning surgeons must apply to Health Canada for

permission

> to

> > use them in specific cases, a regulatory hurdle doctors say requires

> > little more than filling out a few forms. Health Canada has received

> 400

> > requests for silicone implants since the government decided, in

> December,

> > 1999, to once again make them available under special access.

> >

> > " From our point of view, the weight of the scientific evidence was

very

> > strong then, " says Beth Pieterson, director of Health Canada's

medical

> > devices bureau. " There were three very significant reports -- two

from

> the

> > U.S., one >from the United Kingdom -- that [found] there was no

> connection

> > between [the implants] and some of the diseases there was

uncertainty

> with

> > before. So we felt we could release them. "

> >

> > None of the silicone implants have been licensed in Canada for

general

> use.

> > But some surgeons are convinced it is only a matter of time.

> >

> > The truth, Dr. s says, is women are asking for them.

> >

> > " There was so much controversy, I would have thought women would be

much

> > more hesitant to get back into gel implants. But they're not, " says

Dr.

> > s, who was the principal investigator of the first large-scale

> study

> > of its kind to rule out any links between silicone and diseases of

the

> > immune system.

> >

> > " A lot of the women who we took [silicone] gel implants out of,

because

> > they were scared of them, and we replaced them with saline implants,

> ended

> > up having suboptimal results. Now they're coming back to get the gel

> ones

> > put back in. I've got an actress from Los Angeles who's coming up

here

> to

> > get it done because they're more easily available here than they are

in

> > the States. "

> >

> > What makes silicone attractive to some women, surgeons say, is that

no

> > other filling comes as close to the look and feel of a natural

breast.

> >

> > Saline implants -- the only type available in Canada between 1995 and

> 1999

> > -- have a different viscosity or thickness. Think of a water

balloon,

> Dr.

> > De Lorenzi says.

> >

> > " A saline implant is basically a silicone-rubber shell that's filled

> with

> > salt water. It doesn't move like breast tissue. It doesn't feel the

> same. "

> > And it can be prone to wrinkling or folds when used in thin women

who

> have

> > very little breast tissue or fat tissue to begin with, giving the

> breast

> > the appearance of a scallop shell.

> >

> > The new cohesive gel implants, which are made by McGhan Medical

> Corporation

> > -- one of the manufacturers that faced lawsuits during the earlier

> silicone

> > scare -- " feel good and look good, " Dr. De Lorenzi says. " These are

> > excellent for women who are really thin who want to have a B cup or

a

> > small C. If those girls had saline implants, you would see the

ripples

> > through the skin. "

> >

> > Silicone implants are also " indicated, " he says, for women who have

> > experienced a significant amount of " deflation " after giving birth,

> which

> > is one of the main reasons women seek breast enhancement.

> >

> > And if the shell should rupture, the sticky gel would not be released

> into

> > the breast tissue, " because it's all really thick gel. It just stays

> there.

> > It's like the old, first-generation [silicone] implant, " Dr. s

> says.

> >

> > The enthusiasm is a seismic shift from the mood just a decade ago,

when

> > reports began to surface linking implants with such systemic

autoimmune

> > problems as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and scleroderma.

> >

> > In July, 1991, six months after a national U.S. television news

program

> > aired a special report about the dangers of silicone breast

implants,

> an

> > Alabama jury awarded US$5.4-million to a woman who had traces of

> silicone

> > in her lymphatic system. By December of that year, more than 100

> > individual lawsuits had been filed against Dow Corning, the leading

> > manufacturer of silicone-gel implants, while a special panel struck

by

> the

> > U.S. Food and Drug Administration began reviewing the safety data --

> only

> > to find manufacturers had failed to provide sufficient evidence the

> > devices were safe.

> >

> > In January, 1992, the FDA ordered doctors to stop using silicone-gel

> > implants until studies on their safety could be completed. The same

> year,

> > manufacturers pulled their implants off the Canadian market. (The

> implants

> > were still available, however, through special access between 1992

and

> > 1995, before they were removed from the market entirely.)

> >

> > The moves provoked a flurry of liability action in Canada and the

United

> > States. In 1995, U.S. breast implant maker Bristol-Myers Squibb

reached

> a

> > $28-million out-of-court settlement in a class-action suit involving

> women

> > in Ontario and Quebec; a global class-action settlement, affecting

all

> > manufacturers of breast implants, resulted in a settlement of

> > US$4.2-billion in 1994.

> >

> > The settlements were driven by the " rupture phenomenon, " Dr. s

> says.

> > " Many of the implant companies had sent letters out with the implants

to

> > patients saying, 'Rest assured, these things will last your

lifetime,' "

> > says Dr. s, who has been involved as an expert witness for

> > manufacturers and plastic surgeons in about 25 liability cases.

> >

> > " In fact, some of the companies actually had done their own work and

> found

> > out they were not lasting, they were losing strength and rupturing

over

> > time. They had not been totally upfront. "

> >

> > But the manufacturers were never willing to accept their products

caused

> > serious health problems.

> >

> > " And now we have all this new evidence accumulated that there doesn't

> seem

> > to be any causation issue, " Dr. says.

> >

> > Last year, in what is considered a watershed report, a panel of

experts

> > convened by the U.S. Institute of Medicine concluded that while

silicone

> > implants frequently rupture and leak, potentially causing pain,

> > disfigurement and repeat surgery, women with gel implants were no

> likelier

> > than other women to develop serious autoimmune disorders.

> >

> > Other studies -- including a large study in the United Kingdom, the

> Harvard

> > Nurses Epidemiological Study in 1995 and a study by Mayo Clinic

> > investigators in 1994 -- found no evidence linking silicone implants

> with

> > connective tissue diseases and other problems.

> >

> > The cumulative message was the same, Dr. De Lorenzi says: " The health

> > issues were not the issues of brain cancer or problems like that.

They

> > were the issues we always talked about -- capsular contracture

[where

> scar

> > tissue forms around the implant, causing the breast to harden], [the

> fact]

> > implants will eventually break, all those sorts of things. But

people

> > didn't get autoimmune disease, they didn't get arthritis, they

didn't

> get

> > the other things that attorneys were claiming. "

> >

> > Still, thousands of women rushed to get their implants out " because

they

> > assumed they had a problem, or else why would [governments] have

banned

> > them, " Dr. s says.

> >

> > " And then as we took out a lot of the implants, it turned out they

had

> > ruptured with a pretty high frequency, and that added more fuel to

the

> > flame. But there were no immune changes in the body. We've looked at

> the

> > antibodies, we've looked at several hundred patients. Ruptured

implants

> do

> > not cause a woman's immune system to get hyperactive. "

> >

> > Still, not everyone is buying into silicone's sudden redemption.

> >

> > For one thing, while a recent study by the U.S National Cancer

Institute

> > found women who had silicone breast implants were less likely to die

> >from

> > cancer, immune disorders and other diseases than women in the general

> > population, they were two to three times likelier to die from brain

> cancer

> > -- and nearly twice as likely to die from suicide, pneumonia and

> > emphysema. There was also an increased risk of respiratory-tract

> cancer.

> >

> > In a news release, the researchers speculated the higher risks for

brain

> > and respiratory cancer may be the result of " chance findings " or

> " factors

> > common to women who choose to have implants, " such as smoking, and

not

> > exposure to silicone. Still, even the scientists involved

acknowledge

> > " there have been suggestions that implants may have an effect on

> > neurologic pathways, " though the evidence has been conflicting.

> >

> > But leaving aside the issue of whether silicone causes systemic

disease,

> > " we know that the gel implants have been associated with a variety

of

> > local complications, " says Vancouver lawyer Klein, who is

> involved

> > in a class-action lawsuit against breast- implant manufacturers that

> > involves about 2,000 Canadian women.

> >

> > The complications, he says, include rupture, capsular contractures,

> > scarring and inflammation.

> >

> > " The silicone implants were on the market for about 30 years and went

> > through a host of combinations and changes with respect to the

shells,

> > their thickness, the viscosity of the gel inside, " Mr. Klein says.

But

> > they all suffered >from " gel bleed, " he says. " It didn't matter what

> > mixture the manufacturers put inside, it didn't matter how thick the

> > shells were made. They all leaked silicone.

> >

> > " It surprises me that after the history of disease and local

> complication

> > problems silicone gel implants had, that cosmetic surgeons would even

> > consider putting them back in again, " Mr. Klein says.

> >

> > " This is a cosmetic product. It's not a life-saving product. "

> >

> > In Washington, D.C., the National Center for Policy Research for

Women

> and

> > Families says studies such as the National Cancer Institute report

raise

> > more alarming questions than they answer.

> >

> > " These articles are a wake-up call for the almost 300,000 women and

> > teenagers who plan to get breast implants this year, " the group's

head,

> > Diane Zuckerman, told MSNBC this week in an online report dubbed

" The

> > Return of Silicone Valley. "

> >

> > Experts such as Dr. s would argue with such critics about many

> things,

> > but not the numbers. Breast augmentation is more popular than ever.

> >

> > Whether silicone ever again becomes the implant of choice for

Canadian

> > women seeking breast enhancement remains to be seen. Ninety-five per

> cent

> > of all breast implants used between 1963 and 1992 were silicone-gel

> > implants.

> >

> > " I don't know if [silicone] will ever come back to that kind of

> > popularity, " Dr. s says. " But it's certainly coming back. "

> >

> >

>

>

>

>