Fw: Panel allows company to experiment on women evidence shows devices cause horribl

[Guest guest]

This is the most intellligent assessment of what the recent FDA panel has just advised that I have ever read!

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

ilena@...

Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 3:44 PM

Subject: Panel allows company to experiment on women evidence shows devices cause horribl

Thanks KKJ ... Brilliant!

Sunday, October 19, 2003

Approval of new breast implant hinges on medical evidence

Panel allows company to experiment on women evidence shows devices cause horrible problems

http://www.detnews.com/2003/editorial/0310/19/a15-301035.htm

By Kim Gandy

Earlier this week, a not-so-secret government-convened panel told a big company it could make an experiment on women's health even bigger. The initial results of this experiment were not convincing enough.

Never mind that thousands of women developed deformities and required multiple repeat surgeries. (Well, of course, they had repeat surgeries if they were lucky enough to afford out-of-pocket health care expenses.)

The panel wasn't absolutely convinced that women were contracting rare, debilitating diseases on top of their other problems. It was just barely possible that women may not, in fact, become completely disabled or die. So, the panel concluded, women should be allowed to continue to enrich interested industries through this experiment as long as they were informed of certain risks.

But the panel did agonize over continuing this experiment. Because they weren't sure what the risks were, how could they warn women? Even though the panel had been waiting more than 10 years to see the results of this experiment to know how women might get hurt, no one had been willing to actually count the number of women who had suffered and what they had suffered from. So what would they tell women about risks?

The big company had only just started counting women in the past three years of the experiment. Many of the previously healthy women needed operations within the three years. And women recovering from cancer who joined the experiment -- well, they got even sicker. About half of them needed operations during the three years.

Yes, that's a lot of suffering, but then, we couldn't know, really, if they actually would become completely disabled or die.

Yet so many women held garage sales and borrowed money and traveled from faraway to tell their stories of anguish. And the company paid for other women to come and tell the panel that they were happy and to let many more women join the experiment. The panel felt sad for the sick women and was afraid of having more sick women. It was also afraid of being "mean" to the women who hadn't suffered from the experiment and wanted lots of other women to be in the experiment, too.

Because, one panel member said, "It seems irresponsible to approve this product based on this data, but it seems mean not to." And another panel member called the frightening data "mind boggling." And another said he was "flabbergasted." And yet another said they were being "irresponsible."

But, of course, they couldn't be mean to the women who had survived the experiment without illness. Some researchers said most of the terrible problems started after seven to 10 years, but of course the happy women didn't believe them.

So the panel told the big company it could make a whole lot more money doing the experiment by making it bigger and bigger. And the panel told the injured women to keep going to doctors at their own expense to fix the problems with the experiment. And the company said oh we really, really will tell the women to go to doctors. We will tell them to go to the doctor every year if you like -- at their own expense.

This experiment was very, very important. No, it wasn't for a drug for rare diseases, and it wasn't something that would help the planet or possibly bring about world peace. It was to allow the women to put two large bags of silicone (like sand ground up and turned into jelly) into their breasts.

So, go to sleep my little girl. Because that big company is going to give you the "freedom to choose" the experiment. Just don't ask about the risks. Because the panel doesn't know, and your doctor doesn't know and the big company doesn't even want to know. That would be mean.

Kim Gandy is president of National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C.

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For more information on this ongoing implant debacle, you may choose to visit:

www.BreastImplantAwareness.org