MARCH 15, 2014 | BY MICHEL PRACONTAL
Well before the PIP fraud is pinned by AFSSAPS in 2010, surgeons enterprise customers knew about all its faults and some suspected that the controls were rigged. This is demonstrated by unpublished documents revealed by Mediapart.
End of 2013, Jean-Claude Mas, founder of PIP boss, and four officers of his company were convicted of aggravated deception by the court of Marseille. The media has described in detail how the company La Seyne-sur-Mer, pinned in March 2010 for selling breast implants filled with silicone gel fraudulent, rigged to hide controls using a non-medical gel. However, we knew almost nothing about the relationship between PIP and its customers plastic surgeons working in private clinics or public hospitals, and asked who bought fraudulent prostheses, sometimes at a rate of several hundred per year.
Mediapart was able to get all the monthly activity reports prepared by the marketing department of PIP between early 2005 and late 2009, just before the liquidation of the company. Following the example of these lines, written in November 2005 by a sales representative PIP:
"The situation breaks (stocks) is totally incomprehensible and hard since ... 2002. The case of Dr. Delgove is symptomatic multiple orders unfulfilled, prosthetics ordered MX replaced by TX (while not want more ...) ... All this while the competition performs "forcing" to dislodge us ... Dr. Delgove asked more than 180 pairs PIP in 2004! FYI, I just set last week for him nearly € 1,100 at the Congress SOFCPRE (French Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery) ... this for the next week, he is forced ordering elsewhere because they can not be delivered by PIP. "
These internal documents, unpublished so far, illuminate the case of a new day. They show that when the fraud was discovered, the unreliability of PIP had long been an open secret in the middle of Plastic Surgeons. Reports trade show strong tensions between PIP and its customers frustrated by chronic dysfunction of the company: poor inventory management, order tracking irregular, unstable quality of manufacture, etc.. They show that in 2006 and especially from 2007, trade were seriously concerned about the multiplication breaks prostheses. They reveal that some surgeons have questioned the PIP gel in 2007, and suspected fraud controls at least one year before it was highlighted in March 2010, an inspection of the AFSSAPS (French Agency for the safety of health products, become MSNA). We discover, finally, that PIP was able to secure the support of some experts and has maintained close relations with the anti-cancer centers, which have continued to buy his dentures while many surgeons turned away from society Mas .
