I.A.S. IMPLANT AWARENESS SOCIETY

Dear Silicone Sisters,

This letter is all about the NEW SILICONE BREAST IMPLANTS. Now you can decide how great they are.

On June 16, 2001, an article in The National Post Canada read: Silicone implants making a comeback. Years of alarm washed away by new research and a gel like Gummi Bears. "You would never have believed it," says Dr. Walter Peters, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Toronto and a self-styled international expert on silicone breast implants. Dr. Walter Peters has been involved as an expert witness for manufacturers and plastic surgeons in about 25 liability cases.

"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."

(He testified for the manufacturers, NOT the sick women, so he promotes implants. Why then should he be "boggled"?)

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. (Is he now admitting the other gels were not desirable in a woman’s body?)

Dr. Blais states that these new Gummi implants are the same old ones they had in the sixties. Nothing is new, the silicone gel or the silicone shell. They were found to be so unsatisfactory that they were discontinued.

The National Post quoted studies: 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, reports Peters.

Dr. Peters has implanted many women with the new Gummi, and boasts of an American actress coming to him in Canada. For now, the silicone breast implants are available in Canada through special use in specific cases, a regulatory hurdle doctors say requires little more than filling out a few forms. "A lot of 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 gel ones put back in."

Do we doubt the documented records that many plastic surgeons earn over one million a year on breast implants alone. Not counting other procedures.

Joyce Attis, a co-founder and spokesperson for Breast Implant Line Of Canada states in her letter to The National Post, "The statement by Dr. Walter Peters that he is now doing something that he finds "totally mind-boggling" is, in itself 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?"

Joyce adds, "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 on such diseases and then disburse payments to them?" Joyce, who has been diagnosed with several silicone related diseases, asks The National Post and Dr. Peters, "Who funded these studies that found no diseases relating to breast implants?" The manufacturers funded them in 1994!

Word for word from the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, Special Issue on Silicone Toxicity, Volume 4, Number 1, January-March 1995, with peer-reviewed papers edited by 28 doctors, published by Princeton Scientific Publishing Co., Inc, page 11:

It is very clear that causation has been established. One naturally then asks the question, "If causation has been established, why is the scientific medical community divided?" To answer this question, one must look at the studies published by those who claim that "there is no causation," and that "silicone implants are safe."

For the doctor who sees patients with a certain pattern of exposure and disease presentation, all that is needed is medical probability. To claim that "we need large-scale studies" is to let the bodies fall and the patients die in the name of statistics, and not in the name of medicine.

If the Hill criteria, described above, (These criteria were set forth by Sir Bradford Hill in 1965 and have been relied on since then.) are fulfilled, one can conclude that causation has been established. And indeed, the data clearly document that these criteria have been fulfilled.

In summary, the data show that:

Drs. N. Brautbar and A. Campbell.

From this we can clearly see that the National Post article featuring Dr. Walter Peters was a promotional advertisement in the guise of news. We women have been duped enough, let’s not be duped by these features any longer.

Dr. Zuckerman states, "FDA scientists found a statistically significant link between implants and fibromyalgia and several connective-tissue diseases. The study of patients who had silicone breast implants for at least 8 years found that women with ruptured silicone implants may be at risk for several painful and debilitating diseases. When the silicone had migrated outside of the scar tissue surrounding the implant, women were significantly more likely to report a diagnosis of disease such as fibromyalgia, dermatomyositis, polymyositis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, mixed connective-tissue disease, pulmonary fibrosis, eosinophilic fasciitis, and polymyalgia."

"Women can’t make informed choices if manufacturers and plastic surgeons provide inaccurate information to them. Women getting implants at the age of 20 might need at least six more operations just to replace broken implants - which multiplies the expense and the risks of surgery."

On her fact sheet on safety she declares: "The IOM report does not conclude that breast implants are safe, but instead concludes that local complications ‘occur frequently enough to be a cause for concern’ and are ‘the primary safety issue’ with breast implants."

Geoffrey White, Esq., of the Law Offices of White & Meany writes: "Two latest studies including the NIH study demonstrate that breast implants DO indeed CAUSE disease (i.e., fibromyalgia, connective tissue disease, etc.) in certain susceptible women, so even if we ignore the great pathology evidence (and we shouldn’t) and treating doctor’s evidence, now we have epidemiology on our side."

Cornelia Baines MD, MSc, FACE, states in Annals Of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Volume 33, Number 1, Feb. 2000: "Regardless of indication, SBIs are associated with local and mechanical side effects, fibrous capsule formation, discomfort, altered nipple sensation, and implant dislocation and rupture. Such problems are experienced by many and cause indisputable morbidity."

Getting breast implants was the greatest insult I could have given my body. My health today is severely compromised from the wonderful Dow Corning implants I had for 21 years. The fill holes were never properly sealed and they had many ruptures. This was determined on explantation. I will not go for this gimmick again.

I invite all enquiries.

Adella Matthew