THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 7, 1995 TAG: 9510060008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
If a punishment should fit the crime, then you'd think where there's no crime, there's no punishment. Not so in the continuing saga of silicone breast implants.
That tale of woe took a predictable turn Monday when three implant manufacturers agreed to pay $3 billion to women who have implants and who have various ailments. A previous settlement fell apart when Dow Corning, a major manufacturer and thus hit hard for the implant penalty pot, filed for federal bankruptcy protection.
How much each woman gets - from $10,000 to $500,000 - depends on what her ailments are. She need only have implants and certain ailments. She need present no evidence that the implants are connected to those ailments.
That's good for her, because new studies confirm what old studies showed: no connection between those ailments most claimed and silicone breast implants.
As Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot pointed out recently, connective-tissue disease has been widely attributed to implants; yet a new Harvard report has forced even the Food and Drug Administration's David Kessler, who banned implants three years ago, to back off: ``We now have,'' he told Congress this summer, ``for the first time, a reasonable assurance that silicone-gel implants do not cause a large increase in traditional connective-tissue disease in women.''
Implants nevertheless remain banned. And connective-tissue disease remains on the list of claimable ailments.
As do complications from implant ruptures, a problem with many medical devices. Dow Corning tried to start a study of the causes and effects of ruptures, but lawyers for the 440,000 women who have claimed some, any damage from implants nipped that in the bud with a court order.
Too bad. Such a study might have pinpointed some women's particular propensity to rupture that would have helped sort out women who shouldn't have implants. It also might have enabled implant manufacturers to spend that couple of billion bucks slated for the implant settlement developing some other helpful medical device.
Instead, these manufacturers will spend billions compensating lawyers and their clients who voluntarily used their product and, for whatever reason, suffer some ailment. These women are owed, say the claimants, if for no other reason than the manufacturers ``suppressed'' evidence of flaws in their implants. After its own investigation, the Justice Department - the Janet Reno Justice Department - decided last spring that this allegation simply wouldn't stand up in court.
Unfortunately, the companies aren't standing up in court either, to fight a multibillion-dollar settlement based on no evidence. The legal system is such that not only must the accused in such civil suits prove their accusers wrong, which is backward enough. They also find it cheaper to buy their accusers off. The result is bad law, bad science and bad news for a country that once prided itself on fair jurisprudence and top-notch medical research. by CNB