Fw: More on PS´s and Suicide Study and FDA (dis)Approval Hearings

[Guest guest]

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

ilena@...

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 8:18 PM

Subject: More on PS´s and Suicide "Study" and FDA (dis)Approval Hearings

(Response below also from Dr. Joiner to our Gail Hamilton´s letter to him)

From: elishevanumber7@...

Dear Ilena,

Not surprising to see any study sponsored by the

plastic surgeons days before Panel Meeting to approve

silicone gel breast implants on October 14-15.

This one is truly ridiculous, namely that breast implants

may reduce suicide in women who are more prone

to suicide, even though their long-term health will

most likely be reduced through debilitation and psycholical

stress from adverse implant consequences and left with

no method of payment for correction, since insurance companies deny coverage for "elective" augmentation after the fact.

Is there not something wrong with this set-up?

Am I daffy or is it not more likely that those women

who committed suicide with all these factors after

breast implants and failures and complications,

and who were so satisfied for the first few years, AREN'T THEY more likely to commit suicide because of experiencing a deep dive from adverse situations AFTER IMPLANTATION?

It is imperative that you make sure that every woman

on your list knows that they must act now with any

input to the FDA contact BEFORE September 30 (Tuesday)

with their input for Krause at FDA.

The following is correct. called yesterday and is

a person who evidently returns calls, although I tend

to get some attention from past consistency.

Everyone MUST COMMUNICATE IN WRITING NOW

TO HAVE THEIR VOICES HEARD. WOMEN NEED TO

ASK FOR THEIR COMMENTS TO BE READ AND

PLACED ON THE RECORD FOR THIS OCTOBER

14-15, 2003 PANEL MEETING TO CONSIDER or NOT

APPROVAL OF RETURN OF SILICONE GEL IMPLANTS.

It might behoove you to suggest that all women write

e-mails and send special delivery information (if desired)

to Krause and INCLUDE THE FACT THAT

THEIR EXPERIENCE SHOWS THAT LONG-TERM

STUDY OF ANY NEW IMPLANT BE NOT LESS THAN

TEN(10) YEARS. Also, tell what happens when the

complications mount. IF SUICIDE WAS EVER CONTEMPLATED BY ANYONE, have them tell if

that was not AFTER THE NUMEROUS EFFECTS

ADVERSELY CAUSED FROM THE IMPLANTS.

Or if a loved one self-inflicted, then tell them why.

Make sure that copies of all e-mails are sent to

congressional reps/senators/letters to editors in

local newspapers.

The FDA contact:

Krause, Center for Devices & Radiological

Health (HFZ-410), Food and Drug Administration,

9200 Corporate Blvd., Rockville, MD 20850,

Personal phone: (301) 594-3090 Ext. 141

e-mail: DXK@...

cc to: SXN@...

(this is Breast Implant Team Leader, Samie )

Once again, alll comments must be sent before

September 30, 2003 (Tuesday). Call or e-mail

for more details, but do go on the record with

input now.

It grieves me deeply to see a group of plastic surgeons,

so called medical proferssionals, stoop so low as to

ignore the adverse effects of silicone implants and

suggest that women going into the procedure, mostly

teenage women and slightly older now, have sponsored

a study to suggest that they are less suicidal because

of "our (plastic surgeons) contribution of implanting them

with these suicidal reducing prostheses (my words!)."

These are the guys and gals of medicine who advertise

daily to entice teens to become more than you are with

implants, as if they are born defective. These are the

guys who know that silicone implants risks and complications have not changed and will not change

with present direction and production by manufacturers.

These are the guys who simply want anything in the

implant inventory to make a buck. These are the guys

who never describe the potential risks nor hand out

FDA materials indicating risks. These are the guys

who will simply re-operate and replace when complications

arise, but these are also the guys who never tell the

patient that her insurance will not cover these future

bills if she has had "elective augmentation."

No group in medicine has ever set into motion the skill

of "recycling of females for monetary gain" as have today's

plastic surgery industry. They enter your name on their

records and evidently statistically expect to see you again

for the next procedure in a set number of years. Their

only anwer, "let's pop another set of new up-to-date

refills in that cavity, if you can afford the bill!" If there are

real complications with migration, weakness, pain,

etc. "Oh, forgive me, but that's a rheumatologist referral."

This is all too real...

The breast implant promoters in plastic surgery are

a band of thieves who are stealing the futures of so

many young women who so naively believe and trust them.

These are the thieves who set in motion a lifetime of

debilitation and who will retire handsomely just as

the women realize they have been robbed.

Please feel free to send to those who know how harshly

the reality can be. Thank you... T. Wade Clegg III

Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 2:52 PM

Subject: Plastic Surgeons spin "suicide" and breast implant research

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=124-09242003

Note from Ilena: If anyone wants to write Dr. Joiner, and share your opinions of his "research" ...

here's his info:

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/joiner.dp.html

joiner@...

Suicide Risk May Be Lower than Expected for Breast Augmentation Patients, Says Leading Suicide Expert

9/24/03 11:15:00 AM

ªªªªªªªªªªªª

From :

"Gail HAMILTON" <gail@...>

To :

"ilena rose" <ilena2000@...>

Subject :

Fw: implants and suicide - response from Joiner

Date :

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:08:58 -0400

Dearest Ilena,

Thank you again for giving me the chance to write to another "scholar" on the implant issue. Here is what he had to say to me.

----- Original Message ----- From: Joiner

Gail HAMILTON

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 1:34 PM

Subject: Re: implants and suicide

Thank you for contacting me. I am interested in your perspective, and have learned from it. Scholarship and science are such that mistakes are possible. Please do carefully read my forthcoming paper in Aesthetic Surgery Journal (available in print in a week or two I believe) to examine whether I have made mistakes. Most importantly, I am genuinely sorry for what you have been through, and sincerely hope that you obtain at least some relief._____________________NOTE: Due to a very large volume of e-mail, it is sometimes not possible for me to reply to each e-mail. If you contact me but receive no reply, this is very likely the reason._____________________At 06:11 PM 9/24/2003 -0400, you wrote:

Dear Dr. Joiner, After reading your article, I felt I needed to be in touch with you. I have attached a statement that will be read at an FDA hearing on Oct. 14 in Washington. In the last paragraph, I just happen to address the suicide issue.Please read my story and let me know if you had considered this circumstance when you wrote your paper. Hello, my name is Gail Hamilton. I got silicone implants when I was 24 years old. I’d had two children and was disappointed with my appearance after nursing. I was slim and healthy and was told by a plastic surgeon how wonderful these implants were and how they would improve my appearance and they would last a lifetime. 10 days after the augmentation the wounds opened up and there was no appreciable healing. The implants were removed along with large blo od clots; the implants were cleaned and re-inserted. This time the wounds healed. The next problem, my body formed scar tissue around the implants causing them to feel like baseballs. Seven years after my initial surgery the implants were removed, the troublesome scar tissue was taken out and the same implants were re-inserted.By 1989 I was experiencing very uncomfortable right-side breast pain and visited the plastic surgeon again. He could not find anything wrong, so I went home and tried to ignore the sore area under my right breast.In the summer of 1993, I started to feel a burning sensation behind the implants, against my chest wall. It started with one side and the other side followed within a couple of weeks. The burning became worse and worse every day and I went to the plastic surgeon again. I told of the severe burning and also now- I was experiencing shooting pain down my arms and legs and through my back. The surgeon told me that this pain could not possibly have anything to do with my implants, but would remove them if I wanted.I know this sounds dramatic and disgusting, but to try to explain the depth of this pain would be to say, I felt like I was rotting inside my chest while I was still alive. The pain was so severe and I needed to get these things out of me.Nearly 20 years after I sat in the surgeons’ office as a young healthy woman, I was now desperately ill and in unimaginable pain. On November 16th 1993, I had another surgery and this time the implants were removed and not replaced. I had asked for the implants to be returned to me. Eventually when I was able to look in the container, I found only one implant. The other one (the right-side implant) I was told was ruptured too badly and could not be returned to me.At home I began having one crisis after another. I wasn’t able to get out of bed by myself or even sit up. I started asking questions. Why after this surgery had I become so ill? I’d had numerous surgeries before and recovered in due time. Lying in my bed, I wrote for hospital records. I questioned my surgeon. One day as I was lying there reading over my papers - something caught my eye! My surgery began at 1420 hours andcompleted at 1443 hours! These 20 year old implants that I’d been telling my surgeon had been giving me so much grief were removed from start to finish in a mere 23 minutes! Less time than I could get a haircut! How could that be?? More questions to the surgeon revealed the implants had ruptured and had been “somewhat adhered to the chest wall.” None of this was in the original O.R. reports and came out only after I continued to ask questions. Could some of the silicone been missed and left inside of me? I was so desperately ill.I owned a thriving hair salo n and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get rid of the terrible pain throughout my body. I eventually had to close my wonderful business, sell the house and everything I’d worked my entire life for. We lost our 28 ft. sailboat too, which was my saddest day. We lived to go sailing. Now I couldn’t climb aboard a boat let alone haul up a sail! Life as I knew it was over. I was 43 years old. In February 2002, a different plastic surgeon operated on the right breast and found ‘a large gelatinous material consistent with silicone.’ Pathology confirmed it was silicone within scar tissue. Curious, I asked him if it was ‘about the size of a walnut?’ He responded saying ‘oh, more like the size of two walnuts.’ How could this have been missed at my explant surgery?Three renowned rheumatologists agree - severe Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and have diagnosed me as such. I’m so weak, I can’t even get up to shower or brush my teeth or hold a book to read. My life is pain. The surgeries continue. It’s endless. It’s despair. Studies are showing a three-fold suicide increase in implanted women. I can tell you why this is happening. It’s about never ending pain. It’s about losing your career and trying to learn to live on a meager disability pension. It’s the shame. After all, I did this to myself didn’t I?Very sincerely, gail hamilton

_____________________________________________________________________________ Joiner, Ph.D. The Bright-Burton Professor of Psychology Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1270 Phone (850) 644-1454; FAX (850) 644-7739; Pager (850) 386-9039; Lab Phone (850) 644-9362joiner@... Faculty Page Labpage Gene Studies Page

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