Breast implant scare signals need for greater regulation

HEALTH Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered an inquiry into whether the 40,000 women in the UK with French-made PIP breast implants should have them removed following the disclosure that some of them leak and that they have made with the wrong silicon gel, one intended for making mattresses. Lansley’s call follows a French government decision to remove the implants from 30,000 French women, with the state covering the costs.

In the UK some doctors have suggested the failure rate of implants is much higher than previously thought, and have recommended that private clinics should bear the cost of removing implants. Commentators have criticised the lack of regulation in the cosmetic surgery industry, suggesting the breast implant scare is an indictment of an industry that exploits our insecurities for profit.
 
Women need clarity

In a letter to The Guardian, Labour MP Barbara Keeley writes that she was concerned when Andrew Lansley made "bland assurances" about the risk from Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) breast implants. What the 40,000 British women who had the implants needed, she says, was a realistic review of the issues. “What they got was Lansley saying that the government had ‘no evidence’ of safety concerns about the PIP implants that would require their removal.” Keeley “welcomes” the Health Secretary’s call for a review.
 
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham told BBC News that the government needed to issue clear guidelines to calm the fears of those affected by the issue. “Where there is evidence of a rupture, private providers must arrange for urgent removal at no expense to the individual and with any costs to the NHS reimbursed,” he said.

Wake-up call for industry

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Daily Mail says she feel especially for the breast cancer patients who have received defective implants. “It is inexcusable that doctors used inferior products for such vulnerable patients.” In these cases the NHS should step in and remove them without charge.
 
Our anger should also be directed at our lackadaisical regulators, says Alibhai-Brown. “They must wake up and start to monitor our plastic surgery industry.”
 
The truly shocking aspect of the PIP scandal is that it could have been allowed to happen in the first place, says an editorial in The Independent. “Rightly or wrongly, thousands of people choose to have cosmetic surgery every year, some of it highly invasive. That the industry is not regulated as strictly as the wider health sector is grossly remiss.”
 
There is already “an angry pitchfork mob” gathering to bleat about how anyone who has surgery for cosmetic reasons only has themselves to blame, says Viv Groskop in The Times. “I can only suppose that those who say such things have never felt insecure or vulnerable... or that they’ve never tried to improve themselves in some way, however ill advised.”

But the cosmetic surgery industry preys on our vulnerabilities, says Groskop, and the breast implant scare is just one failing of an industry that exploits both men and women. “We need to protect ourselves from it with far stricter regulation.”
 
Who should pay?

Should the NHS pick up the tab, asks Sarah Wollaston, Conservative MP and former GP in The Guardian. It is in our interests that the NHS takes a non-judgmental approach, rather than declining to treat those who take unnecessary risks. Where would we draw the line about treating hang-gliders, skiers or smokers? But it is also time for those who profit from the cosmetic surgery industry “to take greater responsibility for its consequences”. ·