Are you a member of the Breastapo? maybe you should be!

[Guest guest]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/22/opinion/main790110.shtml

Feminists Against Choice

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2005

Panel: Some Silicone Safe

(AP / CBS)

“Yes, there are sometimes local problems such as pain

or hardening of the implant, and correcting these

problems may require additional surgery. But women who

are told of these risks should be able to make

informed decisions for themselves.”

(National Review Online) This column was written by

Sally Satel, M.D..

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The Breastapo are at it again, trying to dictate what

American women should and shouldn't do with their

breasts. On August 9 they were at the National Press

Club, speaking out against the recent FDA decision to

approve marketing of silicone breast implants (under

FDA negotiable conditions) for cosmetic augmentation.

The National Council of Women's Organizations hosted

the event and featured speakers from the National

Organization of Women, the National Women's Health

Network, and Public Citizen, among others.

We are " so concerned about this... because it is

uniquely a women's issue, " said Martha Burk,

spokeswomen for all women " and it uniquely affects the

health and lives of many, many women. No one wants

another Dalkon Shield. " " They're making women sick, "

Kim Gandy of NOW weighed in. " Women will risk a

lifetime of grave complications from faulty breast

implants because the Bush administration and their

appointees value short-term profits over women's

long-term health. "

But what do the data say?

Study after study confirms silicone implants do not

cause disease. It is now 13 years since FDA

Commissioner Kessler imposed a voluntary

moratorium on silicone implants, motivated by case

reports that they caused connective tissue diseases

(e.g., lupus, scleroderma). Within a few months, the

ban was partly lifted for mastectomy patients — though

the women had to agree to be tracked by the FDA in

case there were complications.

Throughout the 1990s, litigation against the

silicone-implant industry flourished in the absence of

any scientific proof that women were made ill by

implants. Dow Corning Corporation, once the biggest

implant maker, filed for bankruptcy in 1995 to pay

$3.2 billion to settle about 440,000 women's claims.

Considering earlier successful lawsuits, the company

chose to settle and thus limit its liability, lest it

go out of business altogether. To date at least 20

studies show no evidence that implants — intact or

broken — cause connective-tissue diseases. Many of

these studies included women followed for an average

of ten years after their implants, and some for up to

three decades. No rigorously designed study showed any

evidence of disease.

Still, the feminist health groups keep pumping out

misinformation. During the conference they focused on

silicone leakage and the serious health problems that

ensue.

However, careful studies show that leaked silicone is

not harmful. No device lasts forever, true, and early

versions of implants, which have been around since the

1960s, did rupture regularly, at rates of at least 50

percent after 15 years. But, generally, the silicone

did not migrate past the fibrous capsule that

naturally forms around the implant. Data from the sole

examination of rupture-incidence rates published in

2003 in The Archives of Surgery indicate that about 20

percent of modern implants rupture within ten years of

cosmetic augmentation.

Several respected medical entities have concluded that

there is no greater incidence of collagen vascular

disease in women with ruptured implants than in those

without implants. These include analyses from the

Institute of Medicine Report, Safety of Silicone

Breast Implants (1999), commissioned by the U.S.

Congress; the U.K. Independent Review Panel on

Silicone Gel Breast Implants (1998); the National

Science Panel (1998); and the National Institutes of

Health (2004).

And last July, a key study appeared in The Journal of

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. It was the first

to track individual women who had suffered implant

ruptures, detecting the ruptures with MRI and

assessing potential damage two years later. After

monitoring 64 Danish women with at least one ruptured

implant, the authors found no change in immunologic

markers (indicators of collagen vascular disease).

Most striking, in three-quarters of the implants in

those 64 women, the rupture was contained in the

fibrous capsule, and most of the women did not even

know the device had torn. In only four percent of the

ruptured implants did small amounts of silicone escape

the fibrous capsule.

What's more, the popular implants today in Europe and

South America are " third-generation " devices. They

have sturdy silicone gel — imagine thick, clear JELL-O

— that typically keeps its shape even if torn.

Fourth-generation devices — likened to gummy bears —

are in the approval pipeline at the FDA and already in

use in many developed countries, but not in the U.S.

and Canada.

What about detection of breast cancer? In a letter to

Congress last spring, women's groups alleged that

implants interfered with mammogram results. This is a

dangerous half truth. Yes, implants often do decrease

visibility of breast tissue on mammographies (to

compensate, radiologists use a specific positioning

technique to get better views), but the critical

question is whether this delays diagnosis. And here

the consensus is strong that women with implants who

develop cancer are not diagnosed at later stages than

women in the general population are. Survival rates

are the same both for cancer patients with implants

and without them.

Fears of serious health risks amount to a tempest in a

C-Cup, as The New Republic memorably put it. Yes,

there are sometimes local problems such as pain or

hardening of the implant, and correcting these

problems may require additional surgery. But women who

are told of these risks should be able to make

informed decisions for themselves.

The objections of the Breastapo are driven by feminist

body politics which say that women should love their

bodies as they are, not change them to please men.

Apparently, in the feminist mind, a woman only has the

right to choose what she does to her body as long as

she chooses the " right " thing.

Sally Satel, M.D., is a scholar at the American

Enterprise Institute and co-author, with

Hoff Sommers, of One Nation Under Therapy