MS and Implants

[Guest guest]

Here is some stuff I got on silicone implants and MS,

I think it also applies to the saline because of the

silicone bag.

Laliberte

From:

EMelmed@... | Block Address | Add to

Address Book

Date:

Tue, 9 Apr 2002 08:11:59 EDT

Subject:

Re: Implants, tram

To:

s_laliberte_2001@...

Dear ,

I am convinced that there is a form of MS from

silicone. There is a Dr

Sharka

in Arlington Texas, a radiologist, who has shown brain

scans with the

typical

white spots that you see in MS in implant patients. I

have seen several

-meaning about 15-20 - with MS.

You may want to try contact Dr Sharka.

I am truely sorry to read about what you have been

through. I am not

sure a

flat chest isn't preferable to the mutilation and the

passage

Dr. Emelmed

Here is Dr.Pattens article on the implants and he

mentions the MS.

MEMOIR OF A JUNK SCIENTIST

BY

BERNARD M. PATTEN, MD, FACP, FRSM

The former President of the American Society of

Plastic and

Reconstructive

Surgery called me a junk scientist. My lame, but

honest, reply is that

I am

a

junk scientist because I have, for the last fifteen

years, been

studying a

piece of junk. That's what the silicone breast implant

was and is. Let

me

explain:

It all started years ago, never mind how many, when I

decided to switch

my

program at Columbia College from American History to

premed. My career

seemed

to go pretty well for a time. I graduated from

Columbia College summa

cum

laude and second in my class of 725 students. Thence I

went to

Columbia's

College of Physician and Surgeons where I also

graduated second in my

class.

They elected me to AOA, the national medical honor

society in my junior

year,

and I took the Mosby Prize for Scholarship at

graduation. After

internship

at

Cornell Medical Center - The New York Hospital, I

returned to Columbia

for

residency in neurology and eventually, by unanimous

vote of the faculty

was

elected Chief Resident in Neurology at the

Neurological Institute of

New

York.

After a fellowship year in human memory at Columbia, I

went to NIH

where I

became the assistant chief of Medical Neurology and

did neurological

consultations for the clinical center and many times

for the United

States

Senate. So far so good. Not a bad start for a junk

scientist, wouldn't

you

say? Along the way I published over 100 papers in peer

reviewed

journals,

gave

over 500 lectures to national and international

audiences and received

many

prizes and awards for research in Parkinson's Disease

(I was there with

Dr.

C. Cotzias when the first dose of DOPA was

given) and Myasthenia

Gravis

(I was there with Dr. King Engel when we pioneered the

immune

suppressive

treatments) as well as a listing in the usual places

such as Who's Who

in

America, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Health

and Medical

Education,

Who's Who in Science and Engineering and so forth. I

had a loving wife

who

was

also a physician and two children and four cats and,

yes, as

unfashionable

as

it may be to admit, I was happy. Happy, that is until

that fatal day

when I

decided to leave the sacred groves of NIG to take a

job as Chief of

Neuromuscular Diseases and eventually Vice Chairman of

Neurology at the

Baylor

College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Soon after that

mistake my

troubles

began.

At Baylor I made friends with Dr. Gerow, one of

the two inventors

of

the

silicone breast implant. explained that he and

Cronin wanted to

do

something with plastic surgery that would match the

artificial heart

the Dr.

Debakey was working on, something that would

draw national

attention

to themselves the way NASA, situated only 40 miles

south of Baylor, got

national attention. First, they tried direct

injections of silicone

into

tissues to make bigger breasts and the results were,

of course, a

disaster.

I

saw lots of these women in consultation. They were by

and large the

wives of

medical students who had volunteered for the

experiments. The silicone

caused

marked fibrosis, hard, painful, disgusting looking

breasts which the

women

were ashamed to show. All others who tried to directly

inject silicone

into

human tissue have gotten the same terrible local

complications proving

that

silicone is not inert but is biologically active

enough to cause severe

local

inflammatory reactions. The interesting thing that

escaped my attention

at

the

time was that most of these wives also had weird

neuromuscular and

rheumatologic diseases including myasthenia gravis,

polymyositis, small

fiber

sensory neuropathy and Sjogren's syndrome. In many

cases, the

autoimmune

diseases required treatment and I applied the

treatments the best I

could

without thinking that there might be a connection

between the silicone

and

the

autoimmunity. Because direct injection gave awful

results, Gerow and

Cronin

decided to enclose the silicone in a elastomer bag and

put the bag into

the

breast area to make big breasts. A lot of people

thought the idea

absurd,

almost obscene, but it did give the promise of what

some women wanted

and it

was quick giving immediate results. Of course, there

ware lots of

problems

with the surgery including infections and herniation

of the implant

through

the incisions and multiple redos because the implant

had ruptured or

shifted

or had developed a baseball hard capsule or the woman

wanted still

larger

and

larger breasts and so forth. But the local

complications Gerow and

Cronin

could handle. Besides whether you put implants in or

you took them out

or

you

changed them, the surgeon still got paid.

Eventually, Baylor accumulated the first and the

largest series of

implanted

women in the world and as the neurologist that Gerow

knew and

presumably

trusted, I got the referrals of the women who had

complaints referable

to

muscles, nerves, spinal cord, or brain. And there were

many of them, a

superabundance. Probably from 1986 to 1993 I

personally saw and

examined

over

2000 such women. Their stories were all quite similar:

Sometime after

the

implantation, they felt weak and tired, developed

morning stiffness,

excessive

fatigue, dry mouth, dry eyes and dry vagina. Most also

had hot painful

tender

breasts with contractures. I made it my business to

examine the breasts

of

all

these women and got pretty good at detecting ruptures,

spills, and

enlarged

local lymph nodes. There were many women with

amazingly anesthetic

nipples

which Gerow told me was because T4, the nerve to the

nipple, had been

cut on

insertion of the larger implants through the axillary

approach. Quite a

few

women had severe sharp shooting chest pains simulating

heart attacks.

Gerow

had an answer for that too: On insertion the implant

forms a physical

barrier

to the regrowth of severed nerves causing neuroma

formation. We even

biopsied

a few cases and proved the neuromas were present and

published two

papers on

chest pain in implanted women. One paper appeared in

Emergency Medicine

and

one appeared in the Southern Medical journal. But the

thing that

impressed

me

the most about the local situation was that the

implant, in this

selected

group of women that I saw, had failed miserably to

deliver what it had

promised. Beautiful breasts they were not. In fact,

the opposite was

true:

The

implant had made satisfactory breasts horribly

deformed and ugly.

I did complete physical examinations on each of the

women and found

that

they

all seemed to show much the same general pattern; they

had skin rashes,

cold

fingers and toes, dry eyes and dry mouths, and they

were weak. We

weren't

sure

how strong a woman should be so I sent out a medical

student to get

pinchometer and gripometer measurements in normal and

hospitalized

women.

The

results confirmed that implanted women, the ones

referred to me at any

rate,

were, in relation to their peers matched for age and

sex, objectively

weak,

usually scoring less that 50% of the controls on the

dynamometer

measurements.

On neurological examination I found that ladies had

more than the usual

trouble with simple mental status tests such as

proverbs, subtractions,

serial

sevens, naming the presidents and so forth. That could

have been

because

they

came from poor education backgrounds, which they did

by and large.

Except,

even some high powered women who had completed

graduate school, Judges

in

Houston courts for instance, or the former assistant

postmaster general

and

other women of achievement in journalism and science,

also did poorly

on

these

tests. Gait and station testing showed most couldn't

do a push up or a

sit

up

and most had glove and stocking sensory loss

suggesting they had

neuropathy.

Laboratory tests confirmed that the women seemed to

have something

autoimmune

though just what that was we couldn't say. There were

lots of abnormal

autodirected antibodies including ANA and rheumatoid

factors and

antinerve

antibodies but none of the ladies actually fit into

the currently

accepted

diagnostic criteria for the diseases usually

associated with those

antibodies.

Almost all the women who had cognitive complaints had

decreased

cerebral

flood

flows as measured by research physicians as part of

the NIG approved

Baylor-

Methodist Cerebral vascular research center grant.

Almost all had

positive

tear tests proving the ladies really did have dry

eyes.

Most of the patients had surgical indications for

implant removal and I

followed them during and after the surgery. I

personally reviewed the

slides

on all tissues removed and gradually learned to

identify free silicone

in

tissue, polyurethane, and the dense inflammation with

foreign body

giant

cells

that surrounds the implant. We documented with

pictures the gross

appearance

of massive silicomas larger than softballs and

capsules thicker than

magazines. We kept track of the relations of

examination results before

to

what happened after surgery. In general, women with

polyurethane

implants

did

lousy and got worse after explantation. Women who had

massive spills of

silicone had teams of surgeons laboring over nine

hours fail to get all

the

silicone out. That group also did poorly. Women with

high titers of

antiGM1

antibodies got progressively worse and sent down hill

often dying of a

weird

neuromuscular disease that resembled a combination of

dermatomyositis,

lupus,

rheumatoid arthritis, motor sensory neuropathy,

Sjogren's syndrome, and

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with, believe it or not,

signs and

symptoms of

multiple sclerosis! Women who had minor spills that

surgeons could

remove

and

those with intact implants did the best. Most in that

group recovered

within

two years. Three of these who had had complete

remissions of well

documented

diseases got tired of living with small tits and made

the mistake of

getting

reimplanted. The diseases, as predicted, roared back

thus fulfilling

Koch's

postulates. We found that the incidence of ruptured

implant correlated

with

the severity of autoimmune disease. The proven rupture

rate for our

series

of

severely ill women with the Multiple sclerosis, for

instance, exceeded

70%.

We

published our results in eight papers covering

everything we could

think of

>from the local to systemic problems. Under separate

cover, I will send

some

reprints of those to you. The citations of all papers

appear in

Medline. My

fellows, Britta and Glen, and I presented our data at

national and

international meetings including the World Federation

of Neurology and

the

American Neurological Association and the American

Academy of

Neurology. The

Southern Medical Society and the Texas Neurological

Society gave us

several

awards for clinical research and encouraged us to dig

further. In many

cases,

our reports hit the front pages of USA Today, The New

York Times, The

Wall

Street Journal and so forth. Little did I realize that

that publicity

would

hurt us. Nor did I realize, until it was too late, how

much it would

hurt.

About 1986 Dow-Corning paid me $4,800 to consult with

them about their

product. I told them what we were finding and I told

them especially

about

my

concern about the rupture rate (50% ruptures in ten

years on average)

and

the

severe local complications we had seen due to

ruptures. I urged them to

set

up

some form of free clinic to care for the injured women

and to make

cowardly

amends for what they had done. Some months later they

told me I was

wrong

and

that the implant caused no such problems. We went back

to the drawing

boards

and redid much of the research only to discover the

same things we had

discovered before. I estimate the pause caused by the

misinformation

received

>from the company delayed our progress for two years.

As it was

misinformation,

because to my chagrin, I learned on my way to

Washington to testify

before

the

expert panel of the FDA, while reviewing the secret

company documents

supplied

to me by the FDA, that the company clearly knew as far

back as 1976

that

silicone spread, caused local inflammation, and in

some animals

resulted in

autoimmune diseases. I appeared before the panel a

shaken man. The

people

who

had hired me as a consultant had deceived me. How

naive I had been.

The rest as they say is history. FDA took implants off

the market for

cosmetic

augmentation. TV began to do shows about how bad a

scientist I was.

Gerow

staggered under the weight of over 13,000 malpractice

suits against him

and

Baylor. Trustees called Doctor , the President

of Baylor, about a

program about me put on by CNN. Frontline even said in

a voice over

that I

was

under investigation by the FBI for Medicare fraud. I

was not, not then,

not

ever. But multiple investigations were conducted on

the basis on

anonymous

complaints to the Texas Board of Medical Examiners.

Seven so far have

been

dismissed after years of investigation and

reinvestigation. Every slide

I

ever

showed in any scientific meeting was seized and

investigated as

possible

evidence against me. Criminals broke into my office

and stole research

data

related to implants. The biopsy laboratory was broken

into and slides

and

reports on implanted patients looked into. A man

posing as my fellow

copied

the brain scans and charts of over 200 patients, a

theft of medical

records

never solved. Death threats arrived in the mail.

People phoned in

threats.

One

plastic surgeon said I was part of a communist

conspiracy to deprive

American

women of their implants. And, yes, a dead decapitated

animal, a rabbit

not a

horse, arrived at the doorstep, just like in the

movies.

Baylor restricted my teaching saying that they

couldn't prevent my

research

but they sure could stop me from talking to students,

interns, and

residents

about implants. They were careful to mention that they

were not

restricting

my

research because they recognized the rights of a

tenured associate

professor

to publish what he wished. And they affirmed that they

wished me to

continue

my teaching in every other aspect just as before.

However, the chairman

of

the

department soon came upon the idea that he could stop

my seeing

implanted

women. I protested but Baylor administration remained

intransigent. So

realizing the futility of trying to make further

progress, I bowed out.

Meanwhile, Cronin stared to make rounds in the nude

and was discovered

to be

demented and Gerow, drinking a lot, refused to have

his protime

checked. He

had an artificial aortic valve for which he took

Coumadin. His

subsequent

death from a cerebral hemorrhage prompted me to

formulate the following

epigram:

The silicone implant was:

Bad for those who made them

Bad for those who put them in

Bad for those who got them in

And bad for those who did research on them.

God rest his soul. Before he died Gerow

predicted what

subsequently

came

true: " The silicone implant, born in Houston, will die

in Houston. "

And so it is with a kind of wispy regret that I make

some suggestions

to

future scientists who might consider doing implant

research. First of

all,

consider carefully, you men and women of the future,

and if you take my

advice, don't do it. It isn't worth it. More than one

career has been

ruined

in this field and others are sure to follow. The

companies have massive

amounts of money to defame even the most sincere and

diligent

researcher.

The

chance that you will escape the same fate as me is

slim. But if the

compulsion

to do research that will have a significant impact on

the health of

women

for

our time and for all time is unavoidable, I suggest

you consider the

following:

?Set up special free clinics to study women with

implants. These ladies

have

genuine medical problems, which are not being

addressed. Regardless of

the

cause of their physical and mental diseases they need

help which they

are

not

able to get at present because for various reasons

they are locked out

of

the

medical system.

?Repeat the epidemiological studies. Most of those

studies, by their

own

admission, are flawed. The Mayo study more than the

others. In fact,

the

Mayo

study was reported in the same section at the annual

meeting of the

American

Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery that I

reported the

complication

of giving a transfusion into an implant. At that

meeting the version

was

that

there was a high incidence of autoimmune disease in

the implanted

patients

compared to controls particularly Hashimoto's

thyroiditis. For some

reason,

partial deselection of evidence I presume, that item

never found its

way

into

the Mayo final report.

?Even forgetting about possible causation for the

moment, why not study

intensively the mechanisms of autoimmunity in patients

with implants?

At the

time of my retirement I had collected 51 cases of

ruptured implants in

patients with multifocal brain infarctions associated

with

antiphospolipid

antibodies. Could that be an accident?

?Follow all women with implants in a national

registry. Require that

all

have

yearly screening examinations for local and systemic

complications.

History

and physical examinations is all that is needed for

effective

screening.

Career researchers not connected with the companies in

anyway and not

connected with the business of installing or removing

implants in

anyway

should do the screening. The companies have spent 26

million dollars on

spin

to make themselves look good. Why not spend a similar

amount on some

real

unbiased research?

?Do animal studies injecting silicone mixed with blood

proteins into

animals.

The results, I predict, will show that the animals

develop autoimmune

diseases.

__________________________________________________

[Guest guest]

Thank you so much. I am so happy to say that all the symptoms I once had of

MS are totally gone. I have no brain fog, no dizziness and no numbness or

tingling anymore. I know that it was the implants, I have no doubt in my

mind whatsoever.

Love

----- Original Message -----

From: " " <s_laliberte_2001@...>

< >

Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 12:46 AM

Subject: MS and Implants

> Here is some stuff I got on silicone implants and MS,

> I think it also applies to the saline because of the

> silicone bag.

> Laliberte

>

>

> From:

> EMelmed@... | Block Address | Add to

> Address Book

>

> Date:

> Tue, 9 Apr 2002 08:11:59 EDT

>

> Subject:

> Re: Implants, tram

>

> To:

> s_laliberte_2001@...

>

> Dear ,

>

> I am convinced that there is a form of MS from

> silicone. There is a Dr

> Sharka

> in Arlington Texas, a radiologist, who has shown brain

> scans with the

> typical

> white spots that you see in MS in implant patients. I

> have seen several

> -meaning about 15-20 - with MS.

>

> You may want to try contact Dr Sharka.

>

> I am truely sorry to read about what you have been

> through. I am not

> sure a

> flat chest isn't preferable to the mutilation and the

> passage

>

> Dr. Emelmed

>

> Here is Dr.Pattens article on the implants and he

> mentions the MS.

>

>

> MEMOIR OF A JUNK SCIENTIST

>

> BY

>

> BERNARD M. PATTEN, MD, FACP, FRSM

>

> The former President of the American Society of

> Plastic and

> Reconstructive

> Surgery called me a junk scientist. My lame, but

> honest, reply is that

> I am

> a

> junk scientist because I have, for the last fifteen

> years, been

> studying a

> piece of junk. That's what the silicone breast implant

> was and is. Let

> me

> explain:

>

> It all started years ago, never mind how many, when I

> decided to switch

> my

> program at Columbia College from American History to

> premed. My career

> seemed

> to go pretty well for a time. I graduated from

> Columbia College summa

> cum

> laude and second in my class of 725 students. Thence I

> went to

> Columbia's

> College of Physician and Surgeons where I also

> graduated second in my

> class.

> They elected me to AOA, the national medical honor

> society in my junior

> year,

> and I took the Mosby Prize for Scholarship at

> graduation. After

> internship

> at

> Cornell Medical Center - The New York Hospital, I

> returned to Columbia

> for

> residency in neurology and eventually, by unanimous

> vote of the faculty

> was

> elected Chief Resident in Neurology at the

> Neurological Institute of

> New

> York.

> After a fellowship year in human memory at Columbia, I

> went to NIH

> where I

> became the assistant chief of Medical Neurology and

> did neurological

> consultations for the clinical center and many times

> for the United

> States

> Senate. So far so good. Not a bad start for a junk

> scientist, wouldn't

> you

> say? Along the way I published over 100 papers in peer

> reviewed

> journals,

> gave

> over 500 lectures to national and international

> audiences and received

> many

> prizes and awards for research in Parkinson's Disease

> (I was there with

> Dr.

> C. Cotzias when the first dose of DOPA was

> given) and Myasthenia

> Gravis

> (I was there with Dr. King Engel when we pioneered the

> immune

> suppressive

> treatments) as well as a listing in the usual places

> such as Who's Who

> in

> America, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Health

> and Medical

> Education,

> Who's Who in Science and Engineering and so forth. I

> had a loving wife

> who

> was

> also a physician and two children and four cats and,

> yes, as

> unfashionable

> as

> it may be to admit, I was happy. Happy, that is until

> that fatal day

> when I

> decided to leave the sacred groves of NIG to take a

> job as Chief of

> Neuromuscular Diseases and eventually Vice Chairman of

> Neurology at the

> Baylor

> College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Soon after that

> mistake my

> troubles

> began.

>

> At Baylor I made friends with Dr. Gerow, one of

> the two inventors

> of

> the

> silicone breast implant. explained that he and

> Cronin wanted to

> do

> something with plastic surgery that would match the

> artificial heart

> the Dr.

> Debakey was working on, something that would

> draw national

> attention

> to themselves the way NASA, situated only 40 miles

> south of Baylor, got

> national attention. First, they tried direct

> injections of silicone

> into

> tissues to make bigger breasts and the results were,

> of course, a

> disaster.

> I

> saw lots of these women in consultation. They were by

> and large the

> wives of

> medical students who had volunteered for the

> experiments. The silicone

> caused

> marked fibrosis, hard, painful, disgusting looking

> breasts which the

> women

> were ashamed to show. All others who tried to directly

> inject silicone

> into

> human tissue have gotten the same terrible local

> complications proving

> that

> silicone is not inert but is biologically active

> enough to cause severe

> local

> inflammatory reactions. The interesting thing that

> escaped my attention

> at

> the

> time was that most of these wives also had weird

> neuromuscular and

> rheumatologic diseases including myasthenia gravis,

> polymyositis, small

> fiber

> sensory neuropathy and Sjogren's syndrome. In many

> cases, the

> autoimmune

> diseases required treatment and I applied the

> treatments the best I

> could

> without thinking that there might be a connection

> between the silicone

> and

> the

> autoimmunity. Because direct injection gave awful

> results, Gerow and

> Cronin

> decided to enclose the silicone in a elastomer bag and

> put the bag into

> the

> breast area to make big breasts. A lot of people

> thought the idea

> absurd,

> almost obscene, but it did give the promise of what

> some women wanted

> and it

> was quick giving immediate results. Of course, there

> ware lots of

> problems

> with the surgery including infections and herniation

> of the implant

> through

> the incisions and multiple redos because the implant

> had ruptured or

> shifted

> or had developed a baseball hard capsule or the woman

> wanted still

> larger

> and

> larger breasts and so forth. But the local

> complications Gerow and

> Cronin

> could handle. Besides whether you put implants in or

> you took them out

> or

> you

> changed them, the surgeon still got paid.

>

> Eventually, Baylor accumulated the first and the

> largest series of

> implanted

> women in the world and as the neurologist that Gerow

> knew and

> presumably

> trusted, I got the referrals of the women who had

> complaints referable

> to

> muscles, nerves, spinal cord, or brain. And there were

> many of them, a

> superabundance. Probably from 1986 to 1993 I

> personally saw and

> examined

> over

> 2000 such women. Their stories were all quite similar:

> Sometime after

> the

> implantation, they felt weak and tired, developed

> morning stiffness,

> excessive

> fatigue, dry mouth, dry eyes and dry vagina. Most also

> had hot painful

> tender

> breasts with contractures. I made it my business to

> examine the breasts

> of

> all

> these women and got pretty good at detecting ruptures,

> spills, and

> enlarged

> local lymph nodes. There were many women with

> amazingly anesthetic

> nipples

> which Gerow told me was because T4, the nerve to the

> nipple, had been

> cut on

> insertion of the larger implants through the axillary

> approach. Quite a

> few

> women had severe sharp shooting chest pains simulating

> heart attacks.

> Gerow

> had an answer for that too: On insertion the implant

> forms a physical

> barrier

> to the regrowth of severed nerves causing neuroma

> formation. We even

> biopsied

> a few cases and proved the neuromas were present and

> published two

> papers on

> chest pain in implanted women. One paper appeared in

> Emergency Medicine

> and

> one appeared in the Southern Medical journal. But the

> thing that

> impressed

> me

> the most about the local situation was that the

> implant, in this

> selected

> group of women that I saw, had failed miserably to

> deliver what it had

> promised. Beautiful breasts they were not. In fact,

> the opposite was

> true:

> The

> implant had made satisfactory breasts horribly

> deformed and ugly.

>

> I did complete physical examinations on each of the

> women and found

> that

> they

> all seemed to show much the same general pattern; they

> had skin rashes,

> cold

> fingers and toes, dry eyes and dry mouths, and they

> were weak. We

> weren't

> sure

> how strong a woman should be so I sent out a medical

> student to get

> pinchometer and gripometer measurements in normal and

> hospitalized

> women.

> The

> results confirmed that implanted women, the ones

> referred to me at any

> rate,

> were, in relation to their peers matched for age and

> sex, objectively

> weak,

> usually scoring less that 50% of the controls on the

> dynamometer

> measurements.

> On neurological examination I found that ladies had

> more than the usual

> trouble with simple mental status tests such as

> proverbs, subtractions,

> serial

> sevens, naming the presidents and so forth. That could

> have been

> because

> they

> came from poor education backgrounds, which they did

> by and large.

> Except,

> even some high powered women who had completed

> graduate school, Judges

> in

> Houston courts for instance, or the former assistant

> postmaster general

> and

> other women of achievement in journalism and science,

> also did poorly

> on

> these

> tests. Gait and station testing showed most couldn't

> do a push up or a

> sit

> up

> and most had glove and stocking sensory loss

> suggesting they had

> neuropathy.

>

> Laboratory tests confirmed that the women seemed to

> have something

> autoimmune

> though just what that was we couldn't say. There were

> lots of abnormal

> autodirected antibodies including ANA and rheumatoid

> factors and

> antinerve

> antibodies but none of the ladies actually fit into

> the currently

> accepted

> diagnostic criteria for the diseases usually

> associated with those

> antibodies.

> Almost all the women who had cognitive complaints had

> decreased

> cerebral

> flood

> flows as measured by research physicians as part of

> the NIG approved

> Baylor-

> Methodist Cerebral vascular research center grant.

> Almost all had

> positive

> tear tests proving the ladies really did have dry

> eyes.

>

> Most of the patients had surgical indications for

> implant removal and I

> followed them during and after the surgery. I

> personally reviewed the

> slides

> on all tissues removed and gradually learned to

> identify free silicone

> in

> tissue, polyurethane, and the dense inflammation with

> foreign body

> giant

> cells

> that surrounds the implant. We documented with

> pictures the gross

> appearance

> of massive silicomas larger than softballs and

> capsules thicker than

> magazines. We kept track of the relations of

> examination results before

> to

> what happened after surgery. In general, women with

> polyurethane

> implants

> did

> lousy and got worse after explantation. Women who had

> massive spills of

> silicone had teams of surgeons laboring over nine

> hours fail to get all

> the

> silicone out. That group also did poorly. Women with

> high titers of

> antiGM1

> antibodies got progressively worse and sent down hill

> often dying of a

> weird

> neuromuscular disease that resembled a combination of

> dermatomyositis,

> lupus,

> rheumatoid arthritis, motor sensory neuropathy,

> Sjogren's syndrome, and

> amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with, believe it or not,

> signs and

> symptoms of

> multiple sclerosis! Women who had minor spills that

> surgeons could

> remove

> and

> those with intact implants did the best. Most in that

> group recovered

> within

> two years. Three of these who had had complete

> remissions of well

> documented

> diseases got tired of living with small tits and made

> the mistake of

> getting

> reimplanted. The diseases, as predicted, roared back

> thus fulfilling

> Koch's

> postulates. We found that the incidence of ruptured

> implant correlated

> with

> the severity of autoimmune disease. The proven rupture

> rate for our

> series

> of

> severely ill women with the Multiple sclerosis, for

> instance, exceeded

> 70%.

> We

> published our results in eight papers covering

> everything we could

> think of

> >from the local to systemic problems. Under separate

> cover, I will send

> some

> reprints of those to you. The citations of all papers

> appear in

> Medline. My

> fellows, Britta and Glen, and I presented our data at

> national and

> international meetings including the World Federation

> of Neurology and

> the

> American Neurological Association and the American

> Academy of

> Neurology. The

> Southern Medical Society and the Texas Neurological

> Society gave us

> several

> awards for clinical research and encouraged us to dig

> further. In many

> cases,

> our reports hit the front pages of USA Today, The New

> York Times, The

> Wall

> Street Journal and so forth. Little did I realize that

> that publicity

> would

> hurt us. Nor did I realize, until it was too late, how

> much it would

> hurt.

>

> About 1986 Dow-Corning paid me $4,800 to consult with

> them about their

> product. I told them what we were finding and I told

> them especially

> about

> my

> concern about the rupture rate (50% ruptures in ten

> years on average)

> and

> the

> severe local complications we had seen due to

> ruptures. I urged them to

> set

> up

> some form of free clinic to care for the injured women

> and to make

> cowardly

> amends for what they had done. Some months later they

> told me I was

> wrong

> and

> that the implant caused no such problems. We went back

> to the drawing

> boards

> and redid much of the research only to discover the

> same things we had

> discovered before. I estimate the pause caused by the

> misinformation

> received

> >from the company delayed our progress for two years.

> As it was

> misinformation,

> because to my chagrin, I learned on my way to

> Washington to testify

> before

> the

> expert panel of the FDA, while reviewing the secret

> company documents

> supplied

> to me by the FDA, that the company clearly knew as far

> back as 1976

> that

> silicone spread, caused local inflammation, and in

> some animals

> resulted in

> autoimmune diseases. I appeared before the panel a

> shaken man. The

> people

> who

> had hired me as a consultant had deceived me. How

> naive I had been.

>

> The rest as they say is history. FDA took implants off

> the market for

> cosmetic

> augmentation. TV began to do shows about how bad a

> scientist I was.

> Gerow

> staggered under the weight of over 13,000 malpractice

> suits against him

> and

> Baylor. Trustees called Doctor , the President

> of Baylor, about a

> program about me put on by CNN. Frontline even said in

> a voice over

> that I

> was

> under investigation by the FBI for Medicare fraud. I

> was not, not then,

> not

> ever. But multiple investigations were conducted on

> the basis on

> anonymous

> complaints to the Texas Board of Medical Examiners.

> Seven so far have

> been

> dismissed after years of investigation and

> reinvestigation. Every slide

> I

> ever

> showed in any scientific meeting was seized and

> investigated as

> possible

> evidence against me. Criminals broke into my office

> and stole research

> data

> related to implants. The biopsy laboratory was broken

> into and slides

> and

> reports on implanted patients looked into. A man

> posing as my fellow

> copied

> the brain scans and charts of over 200 patients, a

> theft of medical

> records

> never solved. Death threats arrived in the mail.

> People phoned in

> threats.

> One

> plastic surgeon said I was part of a communist

> conspiracy to deprive

> American

> women of their implants. And, yes, a dead decapitated

> animal, a rabbit

> not a

> horse, arrived at the doorstep, just like in the

> movies.

>

> Baylor restricted my teaching saying that they

> couldn't prevent my

> research

> but they sure could stop me from talking to students,

> interns, and

> residents

> about implants. They were careful to mention that they

> were not

> restricting

> my

> research because they recognized the rights of a

> tenured associate

> professor

> to publish what he wished. And they affirmed that they

> wished me to

> continue

> my teaching in every other aspect just as before.

> However, the chairman

> of

> the

> department soon came upon the idea that he could stop

> my seeing

> implanted

> women. I protested but Baylor administration remained

> intransigent. So

> realizing the futility of trying to make further

> progress, I bowed out.

>

> Meanwhile, Cronin stared to make rounds in the nude

> and was discovered

> to be

> demented and Gerow, drinking a lot, refused to have

> his protime

> checked. He

> had an artificial aortic valve for which he took

> Coumadin. His

> subsequent

> death from a cerebral hemorrhage prompted me to

> formulate the following

> epigram:

>

> The silicone implant was:

>

> Bad for those who made them

> Bad for those who put them in

> Bad for those who got them in

> And bad for those who did research on them.

>

> God rest his soul. Before he died Gerow

> predicted what

> subsequently

> came

> true: " The silicone implant, born in Houston, will die

> in Houston. "

>

> And so it is with a kind of wispy regret that I make

> some suggestions

> to

> future scientists who might consider doing implant

> research. First of

> all,

> consider carefully, you men and women of the future,

> and if you take my

> advice, don't do it. It isn't worth it. More than one

> career has been

> ruined

> in this field and others are sure to follow. The

> companies have massive

> amounts of money to defame even the most sincere and

> diligent

> researcher.

> The

> chance that you will escape the same fate as me is

> slim. But if the

> compulsion

> to do research that will have a significant impact on

> the health of

> women

> for

> our time and for all time is unavoidable, I suggest

> you consider the

> following:

>

> ?Set up special free clinics to study women with

> implants. These ladies

> have

> genuine medical problems, which are not being

> addressed. Regardless of

> the

> cause of their physical and mental diseases they need

> help which they

> are

> not

> able to get at present because for various reasons

> they are locked out

> of

> the

> medical system.

> ?Repeat the epidemiological studies. Most of those

> studies, by their

> own

> admission, are flawed. The Mayo study more than the

> others. In fact,

> the

> Mayo

> study was reported in the same section at the annual

> meeting of the

> American

> Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery that I

> reported the

> complication

> of giving a transfusion into an implant. At that

> meeting the version

> was

> that

> there was a high incidence of autoimmune disease in

> the implanted

> patients

> compared to controls particularly Hashimoto's

> thyroiditis. For some

> reason,

> partial deselection of evidence I presume, that item

> never found its

> way

> into

> the Mayo final report.

> ?Even forgetting about possible causation for the

> moment, why not study

> intensively the mechanisms of autoimmunity in patients

> with implants?

> At the

> time of my retirement I had collected 51 cases of

> ruptured implants in

> patients with multifocal brain infarctions associated

> with

> antiphospolipid

> antibodies. Could that be an accident?

> ?Follow all women with implants in a national

> registry. Require that

> all

> have

> yearly screening examinations for local and systemic

> complications.

> History

> and physical examinations is all that is needed for

> effective

> screening.

> Career researchers not connected with the companies in

> anyway and not

> connected with the business of installing or removing

> implants in

> anyway

> should do the screening. The companies have spent 26

> million dollars on

> spin

> to make themselves look good. Why not spend a similar

> amount on some

> real

> unbiased research?

> ?Do animal studies injecting silicone mixed with blood

> proteins into

> animals.

> The results, I predict, will show that the animals

> develop autoimmune

> diseases.

>

>

>

> __________________________________________________

>