Fw: Silicone's bust to boom comeback ... Australian PR piece

[Guest guest]

----- Original Message ----- From: ilena rose

Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 3:54 PM

Subject: Silicone's bust to boom comeback ... Australian PR piece

To respond to this PR piece ... send to

newsroom@...

or use this link:

http://news.com.au/feedback/

Ilena Rosenthalhttp://www.BreastImplantAwareness.org

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,5995199%255E13780,00.html

Silicone's bust to boom comebackBy Harlow in Los AngelesFebruary 17, 2003

COSMETIC surgeons have put the champagne on ice. US health authorities are preparing to end a 10-year moratorium on silicone breast implants, giving a lift to the medical profession and the not-so-generously endowed.

Pamela's bust has been an inspiration to many women seeking breast augmentation. Up to 2 million women in the US - many inspired by the example of the likes of Pamela , the Baywatch star - paid thousands of dollars to have their bodies and spirits boosted by a polymer gel insert, before a health scare began a decade ago.

The boom was curtailed in the early 1990s, when several manufacturers were hit hard by legal actions blaming implants for conditions including arthritis and skin disease. The US Food and Drug Administration ordered a sales moratorium and the remaining makers ran years of tests.

The latest evidence, however, indicates that women with silicone implants run no significant risk to their health and the FDA is expected to lift the moratorium later this year.

In Australia, a similar moratorium was placed on the manufacture and sale of silicone implants in 1992.

However, this was later lifted and, in July 1997, the Therapeutic Devices Evaluation Committee concluded that there was no strong evidence linking breast implants and diseases.

Teitelbaum, a Los Angeles surgeon who has taken part in recent implant trials, said: "It is notably better than saline, or any of the other substitutes that American women have had to put up with over the past 10 years."

Silicone was temporarily eclipsed by saline, but, according to experts, the bags never felt or looked the same. If overfilled, they are hard; underfilled, they wrinkle. They can also slosh audibly. Critics watching the surgically enhanced Demi in her 1994 film, Disclosure, wrote of seeing her water-filled breasts "ripple" as she molested .

The turning point for silicone implants dates to 1996, when Marcia Angell, of the New England Journal of Medicine, produced the first analysis of the silicone-enhancement consumer "frenzy" that prompted the FDA to ban them. "It was calculated hysteria by the greedy taking advantage of the fears of the scientifically ignorant," she concluded.

Last week, the FDA said it could never guarantee public safety, only reduce some dangerous threats. "We sort through the really bad stuff, and leave the rest for the informed consumer to evaluate their own personal level of risk," a spokesman said.

Implant design, meanwhile, has carried on, with trials of silicone "bubbles" that are protected by harder shells, and a more expensive teardrop-shaped cohesive gel implant that does not leak.

The Sunday Times

The Australian

Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.