A huge scandal has broken out in France over faulty silicon breast implants. But the scandal has far-reaching consequences for women as far away as Chile and China.

There are tens of thousands of women in France living in fear right now that their breast implants may have to be removed. Research into the implants made by the French manufacturer PIP show that the silicon material is prone to bursting. There are also fears about the safety of the implants after women died of cancer some time after receiving them.

Worldwide scandal
The French government is expected to call up all women who have the implants to have them removed as a precaution. Around 30,000 French women will be affected who have either decided to have a breast enlargement operation for esthetical reasons or because of the removal of a breast after cancer treatment. But the matter has gone far beyond the French borders. There is already talk of a “worldwide scandal”.

The French company PIP has been producing breast implants for almost ten years. And with great success. The company became a world leader in the sector: producing 100,000 implants every year, which are distributed to 65 countries all over the world. The main market (50 percent) is in South America, where the implants are sold via hospitals in Chile, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina.

A quarter of the exports went to West European countries like Great Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The French implants were also shipped to the Middle East (from Turkey to Syria) and Azia (from Thailand to China).

Burst
The bubble has burst, so to speak, for the French company. In 2010, the first problems came to light. PIP used a different type of silicon than it officially registered; the implants were cheaper and of inferior quality: so they burst. More than 2000 French women took the company to court because PIP had misinformed them

Problems emerged in other countries too. In the spring of 2010, the Chilean authorities took the French breast implants off the market. Venezuela and Brazil followed suit, as did Colombia later.

Carcinogenic?
In West Europe, the Spanish authorities called on hospitals to stop using PIP products, in Great Britain hundreds of women took the company to court.

Last month, the ‘silicon scandal’ took on a whole new dimension when a French woman with PIP breast implants died of lymph cancer. Her family blamed her illness and death on the silicon implants. Research has not been able to show a direct link, but that made little difference to the commotion in France.

Now Paris is considering advising all 30,000 French women with PIP implants to have them removed as a precaution. The government is almost certain to foot the bill, because the French breast implant company PIP has gone bankrupt and is therefore unable to pay compensation. In Great Britain, women with PIP implants have decided to sue the clinics which operated on them.

(nc/rk)