Re: The role of Public relations in the breast implant issue

[Guest guest]

Thanks again Patty . . .

Time moves on, but the implant situation stays the

same!

I hope ALL of you are contacting your Federal

legislators about this issue (Senators and

Representives) . . . . In addition to

Zuckerman's efforts, there are others trying to make

our voices heard right now. Unless we speak out, they

have no reason to believe implants are as dangerous as

they are.

Something pointed out to me recently is that,

regardless of what state you live in, Congressional

Committee heads HAVE to listen to the public. . . Some

women are using the help of women from states other

than their own to get their message out.

Maybe someone has a short cut to the addresses/phone

numbers/fax nunmbers they will share.

Rogene

--- Tricia Trish <glory2glory1401@...> wrote:

> Here you have it, carefully laid out. There was

> an agenda to make breast implants look harmless.

>

> " This turnaround is no accident. PR Watch has

> obtained internal documents from Burson-Marsteller,

> the PR firm which engineered Dow Corning's PR

> strategy in the early 1990s. These documents provide

> an intriguing peek into a massive, expensive, and

> carefully orchestrated campaign that integrates

> state-of-the-art grassroots PR with subtle

> manipulations of science and the legal process. "

>

> " The jury judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud,

> based on internal corporate memos and studies

> showing that the company had failed to inform the

> public of health risks related to implants. "

>

> Published on Center for Media and Democracy

> (http://www.prwatch.org)

> Confidence Game: Burson-Marsteller's PR Plan for

> Silicone Breast Implants By CMD

> Created 10/30/2004 - 08:49

> by C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

> Once reviled as corporate villains, the

> manufacturers of silicone breast implants have made

> a stunning comeback recently in the court of public

> opinion. A series of scientific studies and news

> stories have emerged, arguing that breast implants

> are in fact harmless, and that companies such as Dow

> Corning and Bristol-Myers are hapless victims of

> misguided women, greedy attorneys and manipulated

> juries.

> This turnaround is no accident. PR Watch has

> obtained internal documents from Burson-Marsteller,

> the PR firm which engineered Dow Corning's PR

> strategy in the early 1990s. These documents provide

> an intriguing peek into a massive, expensive, and

> carefully orchestrated campaign that integrates

> state-of-the-art grassroots PR with subtle

> manipulations of science and the legal process.

> The PR story begins in 1985, when

> Burson-Marsteller warned Dow Corning of " the

> potential for a corporate media crisis " after a

> federal jury in San Francisco ordered the company to

> pay $1.7 million to Stern in Carson City,

> Nevada for what the court judged were " defectively

> designed and manufactured " breast implants. The jury

> judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based on

> internal corporate memos and studies showing that

> the company had failed to inform the public of

> health risks related to implants.

> Although the Stern case received slight media

> coverage, Burson-Marsteller wrote an analysis titled

> " Silicone Medical Implants as a Public Issue, " in

> which the PR firm predicted that " the combination of

> human suffering, large financial awards, big

> business and big medicine . . . represent a

> potentially volatile media situation for the

> company. "

> From Cover-up to Blow-up After unsuccessful

> attempts to overturn the Stern verdict, Dow's

> lawyers negotiated a settlement in which the company

> agreed to pay the judgment in exchange for a

> " protective order " blocking public access to

> embarrassing internal documents and testimony which

> had emerged during the trial. In a series of

> subsequent cases filed by other plaintiffs, Dow

> settled out of court, again obtaining secrecy orders

> to keep damaging information from reaching the

> public.

> In the late '80s, however, Dr. Sydney Wolfe, the

> head of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Health Research

> Group, became an outspoken critic of implants.

> Women's groups also began pressuring the FDA to ban

> silicone implants.

> In December 1990, the story hit big on Connie

> Chung's Face to Face on CBS-TV, which featured

> interviews with a series of seriously ill women who

> blamed implants for their conditions. The show

> touched off a frenzy among women with implants, and

> the FDA came under additional public pressure. In

> March 1991, a New York City court awarded $4.5

> million to a woman who claimed that implants had

> caused her cancer.

> Juries judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based

> on internal corporate memos documents showing that

> the company failed to inform the public of health

> risks related to implants.

> As the crisis grew, so did the company's PR

> campaign. In 1990, Burson-Marsteller billed a paltry

> $6,000 in PR fees to Dow Corning, but " From May 1991

> through February 1992 our billings have been

> $3,776,000, with gross income of $1,384,000, " stated

> Burson-Marsteller Senior Vice President na

> s, in a March 10, 1992 letter marked

> " confidential " to Larry Snodden, President of

> B-M/Europe.

> According to s, Dow's PR crisis exploded

> when yet another implant recipient, nne

> Hopkins, sued the company and the " jury reached a

> verdict in December 1991. They found Dow Corning

> guilty of fraud, oppression and malice with damages

> of $7.4 million. Damning memos on issues of quality

> control and safety, which had been under protective

> orders, reached the public and we've been playing

> catch-up ever since. . . . Our job has become damage

> control of language that compares breast implants to

> the 'Pinto gas tank' and a multitude of other

> comments " in memos which are " almost impossible to

> defend in court and certainly in the 'court of

> public opinion.' "

> By 1992, the FDA had imposed a ban on further

> breast implants, and implant manufacturers faced

> lawsuits worth billions of dollars. Dow began to

> fear for its very survival, as breast implants

> threatened to become a wedge opening the company to

> even wider scrutiny. " There are other issues on the

> horizon for them, " s wrote. " All silicones

> may be attacked, their other medical devices like

> joints are under attack and they have some

> environmental issues too. "

> In a separate strategy document, Burson-Marsteller

> advised, " We must aggressively fight a world in

> which 'silicone-free' becomes a labeling boast. "

> Mobilizing the Masses As the FDA moved toward

> hearings on the implant controversy, Dow and the

> plastic surgeons launched a fierce PR counterattack.

> Burson-Marsteller and its subsidiary, Gold &

> Liebengood, led the charge for Dow, while the

> plastic surgeons retained the PR firms of Kent &

> O'Connor, along with Black, Manafort, Stone & ,

> another B-M subsidiary.

> One of Dow's internal memos from that period has

> been cited by critics of the company as evidence

> that the company was engaged in deliberate

> deception. Plaintiffs and their attorneys have

> emphasized a sentence from the memo in which Dow CEO

> Dan states, " The issue of cover-up is going

> well from a long-term perspective. "

> Less attention, however, has been given to the

> remainder of the memo, in which he describes

> clearly the company's PR strategy. " The number one

> issue in my mind is the establishment of networks, "

> states. " This is the largest single issue on

> our platter because it affects not only the next

> 2--3 years of profitability . . . but also

> ultimately has a big impact on the long-term ethics

> and believability issues. . . . I have started to

> initiate surgeon contact . . . to organize the

> plastic surgery community. . . . The place we have

> the biggest hole still missing . . . is in this

> whole arena of getting the patient grassroots

> movement going. "

>

>

> " These women (including celebrities) will be trained

> and testimony will be written for them to deliver

> before Congressional committees. "

> --internal Burson-Marsteller PR document

>

>

> " Grassroots " has become a corporate buzzword for a

> PR strategy which uses corporate wealth to subsidize

> orchestrated mass campaigns that put seemingly

> independent citizens on the front lines as activists

> for corporate causes. , for example,

> has paid Burson-Marsteller tens of millions of

> dollars to organize smokers into the National

> Smokers' Alliance, which effectively lobbies for the

> company in the name of " smokers' rights. "

> na s described B-M's grassroots

> strategy for Dow in a confidential letter on

> September 9, 1991 addressed to B-M subsidiary Gold &

> Liebengood. " I was not going to put this into

> writing, but wanted you both to be up to speed--and

> there's too much information for you to have to

> listen to it all verbally, " s wrote. " With

> the FDA's new penchant for walking into ad agencies

> and demanding to look at documents, I hope you'll

> give this a toss once you've read it. "

> According to s, " No one really knows why

> the women who have problems have them. . . . It may

> be that there are women with an allergic reaction to

> the silicone gel, " although she termed this

> " unlikely. "

> Worried that the FDA was considering a ban on

> silicone breast implants, s outlined a

> strategy for " getting women angry about having the

> right to make their own decision about implants

> taken away from them. . . . We also want to place

> regional, and if possible, national media stories on

> the need for keeping this option open to women. "

> Star Search Another internal document describes

> Burson-Marsteller's grassroots organizing tactics in

> more detail: " Utilize a well-known celebrity who has

> breast implants for reconstructive purposes to speak

> out on the benefits of them. Utilize spokespeople

> drawn from women's cancer support groups in major

> markets to defend implants by writing letters to the

> editor, participating in media interviews, and

> communicating positive messages to women's groups in

> their

=== message truncated ===

[Guest guest]

Writing your Congressmen is easy....so easy that we have no excuses!

Here is a link to get you to your state representataves. You just

have to enter your zip code. Let them hear from you:

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/

Here is another that lists them by name if you know who you want to

write to:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Tell them what you have endured, what you want to happen, how this

insanity needs to stop or anything else that is on your mind!

Patty

>

> > Here you have it, carefully laid out. There was

> > an agenda to make breast implants look harmless.

> >

> > " This turnaround is no accident. PR Watch has

> > obtained internal documents from Burson-Marsteller,

> > the PR firm which engineered Dow Corning's PR

> > strategy in the early 1990s. These documents provide

> > an intriguing peek into a massive, expensive, and

> > carefully orchestrated campaign that integrates

> > state-of-the-art grassroots PR with subtle

> > manipulations of science and the legal process. "

> >

> > " The jury judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud,

> > based on internal corporate memos and studies

> > showing that the company had failed to inform the

> > public of health risks related to implants. "

> >

> > Published on Center for Media and Democracy

> > (http://www.prwatch.org)

> > Confidence Game: Burson-Marsteller's PR Plan for

> > Silicone Breast Implants By CMD

> > Created 10/30/2004 - 08:49

> > by C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

> > Once reviled as corporate villains, the

> > manufacturers of silicone breast implants have made

> > a stunning comeback recently in the court of public

> > opinion. A series of scientific studies and news

> > stories have emerged, arguing that breast implants

> > are in fact harmless, and that companies such as Dow

> > Corning and Bristol-Myers are hapless victims of

> > misguided women, greedy attorneys and manipulated

> > juries.

> > This turnaround is no accident. PR Watch has

> > obtained internal documents from Burson-Marsteller,

> > the PR firm which engineered Dow Corning's PR

> > strategy in the early 1990s. These documents provide

> > an intriguing peek into a massive, expensive, and

> > carefully orchestrated campaign that integrates

> > state-of-the-art grassroots PR with subtle

> > manipulations of science and the legal process.

> > The PR story begins in 1985, when

> > Burson-Marsteller warned Dow Corning of " the

> > potential for a corporate media crisis " after a

> > federal jury in San Francisco ordered the company to

> > pay $1.7 million to Stern in Carson City,

> > Nevada for what the court judged were " defectively

> > designed and manufactured " breast implants. The jury

> > judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based on

> > internal corporate memos and studies showing that

> > the company had failed to inform the public of

> > health risks related to implants.

> > Although the Stern case received slight media

> > coverage, Burson-Marsteller wrote an analysis titled

> > " Silicone Medical Implants as a Public Issue, " in

> > which the PR firm predicted that " the combination of

> > human suffering, large financial awards, big

> > business and big medicine . . . represent a

> > potentially volatile media situation for the

> > company. "

> > From Cover-up to Blow-up After unsuccessful

> > attempts to overturn the Stern verdict, Dow's

> > lawyers negotiated a settlement in which the company

> > agreed to pay the judgment in exchange for a

> > " protective order " blocking public access to

> > embarrassing internal documents and testimony which

> > had emerged during the trial. In a series of

> > subsequent cases filed by other plaintiffs, Dow

> > settled out of court, again obtaining secrecy orders

> > to keep damaging information from reaching the

> > public.

> > In the late '80s, however, Dr. Sydney Wolfe, the

> > head of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Health Research

> > Group, became an outspoken critic of implants.

> > Women's groups also began pressuring the FDA to ban

> > silicone implants.

> > In December 1990, the story hit big on Connie

> > Chung's Face to Face on CBS-TV, which featured

> > interviews with a series of seriously ill women who

> > blamed implants for their conditions. The show

> > touched off a frenzy among women with implants, and

> > the FDA came under additional public pressure. In

> > March 1991, a New York City court awarded $4.5

> > million to a woman who claimed that implants had

> > caused her cancer.

> > Juries judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based

> > on internal corporate memos documents showing that

> > the company failed to inform the public of health

> > risks related to implants.

> > As the crisis grew, so did the company's PR

> > campaign. In 1990, Burson-Marsteller billed a paltry

> > $6,000 in PR fees to Dow Corning, but " From May 1991

> > through February 1992 our billings have been

> > $3,776,000, with gross income of $1,384,000, " stated

> > Burson-Marsteller Senior Vice President na

> > s, in a March 10, 1992 letter marked

> > " confidential " to Larry Snodden, President of

> > B-M/Europe.

> > According to s, Dow's PR crisis exploded

> > when yet another implant recipient, nne

> > Hopkins, sued the company and the " jury reached a

> > verdict in December 1991. They found Dow Corning

> > guilty of fraud, oppression and malice with damages

> > of $7.4 million. Damning memos on issues of quality

> > control and safety, which had been under protective

> > orders, reached the public and we've been playing

> > catch-up ever since. . . . Our job has become damage

> > control of language that compares breast implants to

> > the 'Pinto gas tank' and a multitude of other

> > comments " in memos which are " almost impossible to

> > defend in court and certainly in the 'court of

> > public opinion.' "

> > By 1992, the FDA had imposed a ban on further

> > breast implants, and implant manufacturers faced

> > lawsuits worth billions of dollars. Dow began to

> > fear for its very survival, as breast implants

> > threatened to become a wedge opening the company to

> > even wider scrutiny. " There are other issues on the

> > horizon for them, " s wrote. " All silicones

> > may be attacked, their other medical devices like

> > joints are under attack and they have some

> > environmental issues too. "

> > In a separate strategy document, Burson-Marsteller

> > advised, " We must aggressively fight a world in

> > which 'silicone-free' becomes a labeling boast. "

> > Mobilizing the Masses As the FDA moved toward

> > hearings on the implant controversy, Dow and the

> > plastic surgeons launched a fierce PR counterattack.

> > Burson-Marsteller and its subsidiary, Gold &

> > Liebengood, led the charge for Dow, while the

> > plastic surgeons retained the PR firms of Kent &

> > O'Connor, along with Black, Manafort, Stone & ,

> > another B-M subsidiary.

> > One of Dow's internal memos from that period has

> > been cited by critics of the company as evidence

> > that the company was engaged in deliberate

> > deception. Plaintiffs and their attorneys have

> > emphasized a sentence from the memo in which Dow CEO

> > Dan states, " The issue of cover-up is going

> > well from a long-term perspective. "

> > Less attention, however, has been given to the

> > remainder of the memo, in which he describes

> > clearly the company's PR strategy. " The number one

> > issue in my mind is the establishment of networks, "

> > states. " This is the largest single issue on

> > our platter because it affects not only the next

> > 2--3 years of profitability . . . but also

> > ultimately has a big impact on the long-term ethics

> > and believability issues. . . . I have started to

> > initiate surgeon contact . . . to organize the

> > plastic surgery community. . . . The place we have

> > the biggest hole still missing . . . is in this

> > whole arena of getting the patient grassroots

> > movement going. "

> >

> >

> > " These women (including celebrities) will be trained

> > and testimony will be written for them to deliver

> > before Congressional committees. "

> > --internal Burson-Marsteller PR document

> >

> >

> > " Grassroots " has become a corporate buzzword for a

> > PR strategy which uses corporate wealth to subsidize

> > orchestrated mass campaigns that put seemingly

> > independent citizens on the front lines as activists

> > for corporate causes. , for example,

> > has paid Burson-Marsteller tens of millions of

> > dollars to organize smokers into the National

> > Smokers' Alliance, which effectively lobbies for the

> > company in the name of " smokers' rights. "

> > na s described B-M's grassroots

> > strategy for Dow in a confidential letter on

> > September 9, 1991 addressed to B-M subsidiary Gold &

> > Liebengood. " I was not going to put this into

> > writing, but wanted you both to be up to speed--and

> > there's too much information for you to have to

> > listen to it all verbally, " s wrote. " With

> > the FDA's new penchant for walking into ad agencies

> > and demanding to look at documents, I hope you'll

> > give this a toss once you've read it. "

> > According to s, " No one really knows why

> > the women who have problems have them. . . . It may

> > be that there are women with an allergic reaction to

> > the silicone gel, " although she termed this

> > " unlikely. "

> > Worried that the FDA was considering a ban on

> > silicone breast implants, s outlined a

> > strategy for " getting women angry about having the

> > right to make their own decision about implants

> > taken away from them. . . . We also want to place

> > regional, and if possible, national media stories on

> > the need for keeping this option open to women. "

> > Star Search Another internal document describes

> > Burson-Marsteller's grassroots organizing tactics in

> > more detail: " Utilize a well-known celebrity who has

> > breast implants for reconstructive purposes to speak

> > out on the benefits of them. Utilize spokespeople

> > drawn from women's cancer support groups in major

> > markets to defend implants by writing letters to the

> > editor, participating in media interviews, and

> > communicating positive messages to women's groups in

> > their

> === message truncated ===

>