Defective breast implants chief sentenced to four years in jail
A woman undergoes a procedure to remove leaking PIP implants
Rex Features
The founder of a French company that sold defective breast implants across Europe has been sentenced to four years in jail. Jean-Claude Mas was chief executive at PIP, which caused widespread panic in 2011 when it was discovered that the firm had been using industrial silicone in its products. VoR’s Scott Craig spoke to Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University.
Around 400,000 women are thought to have used the implants, including almost 50,000 in Britain.
Heneghan said: "The issue is that the breast implants were first made out of the silicone, but what happened is, in Europe and in other areas in the world, the makers actually changed the content of the breast implants, without actually telling anybody or telling the regulators. What they ended up doing was using an industrial-grade silicone, which – if you look at the trial – they can’t actually tell what the content are. I suspect they did that because it was cheaper."
What would the impact be? Why is that dangerous to people’s health?
Heneghan said: "When you implant something inside the body it’s very important that it’s inert. It doesn’t do anything; it doesn’t cause any toxic reaction. Sometimes these implants can actually burst and leak into a human body. And the problem is that some these chemicals that are different, this industrial-grade, are not inert and may be potentially toxic and there are some concerns that may even be cancerous."
