I think the pressure on men and boys is increasing massively these days – not least as companies see a big, and relatively untapped, market.



No disagreement with this.

If only all contracts were written in such a way.

It's a watershed moment for the cosmetic surgery industry. They need to sort this and quickly, those who don't will be (rightly) screwed.

Providers who are saying they will charge are bandying about figures of around £3K per op. IF that is supposed to be 'cost price' (and I have no idea if it is) then that means the cost of 13,000 is approx. £40m. That would make a hole in anyone's accounts. What i would say though is that they presumably did NOT charge these 'low' prices to insert the implants in the first place, and so have already collected substantially more than that from the patients.

There are troubling aspects which are easy to find on the web. There seems to have been much noise about PIP implants for a long time, and the US never authorised them at all. Was there an element of ignoring the warning flags and just ploughing on blindly, hiding behind the 'approval' shield? Looks like it to me.

As for who pays - well,

(a) obviously every clinic should be insured, so cost to them should not even come into it. I suspect the difference is between volunteering to do a replacement directly; and a customer going via lawyers with a formal claim. The latter would be passed straight on to the clinic's insurers, whereas the former would be the clinic choosing to pay out of its own pocket. Thank heaven for claimant lawyers and (while they last) no win no fee agreements. These will empower the women concerned to get justice.

(b) the manufacturer may have gone bust, but surely it must have been someone's job to check whether such a supplier was properly insured, and that, year on year, this insurance remained adequate and in force? Or did the clinics never bother checking whether major suppliers carried insurance cover? If so, they are fools and richly deserve to be sued and made to pay.

I don't know if you're implying that I did or not, but I'm not saying any of it is 'all right'. And I have stated quite clearly that I think the private clinics should pay for any corrective surgery.

But aren't these things just a depressing indictment of our 'compensation culture'?

? No, I wasn't!



I can guarantee that the insurance companies will argue precisely that. Of course, the numbskulls currently comprising what is laughingly called the "government" are currently hell-bent on destroying people's current ability to take on such organisations with equality of arms, under no win no fee, and are about to enact laws which will mean that the innocent victims will still have to pay a slice of their own legal fees. Nobody is interested in this, they won't complain until it happens to them, and then it will be far too late.

In a year or so, a woman suing a breast implant company, up against the might of their insurance company and fancy lawyers will, if she wins, have to pay part of the legal costs (the lawyer's Success Fee) and will also have to pay her legal expenses insurance premium, which could all amount to thousands of pounds. That is justice, Lib-Con style. Even when they fook up, shove some money into the pockets of big business wrongdoers, at the expense of innocent victims.

There's also the issue of setting a precedent for future 'vanity' cosmetic issues. If the NHS decides to open its doors and foot the bill for every dodgy breast implant, they're also in effect saying they'll put right every private issue of faulty cosmetic surgery - on whatever scale.

Who knows what the long-term damage will be for those stupid people who enjoy looking like ducks and have collagen injections in their faces every few weeks - will this be the result in 10 years?:

Should the NHS perform corrective surgery?

The explosion in cosmetic surgery has - for the most part - been a recent phenomenon. Chopping, changing, removing bits and inserting various foreign objects and chemicals into our bodies is not a great idea and we've actually got no idea what the long-term damage and effects will be.

As others have said, if I seek out a private firm and pay for something that subsequently turns out to be faulty, I don't generally expect the government to sort my problems out. I generally expect the firm concerned to sort me out, or if that's not happening for whatever reason, I take responsibility and if I feel I've a strong enough case, seek recompense in the courts.

Not at all, as the father of 23 and 19 year old daughters I know full well of the pressures on them to comply and to look a certain way and as I point out to them every time they are off on another shopping trip to a shopping mall somewhere - come back and tell me how many clothes shops they find that cater exclusively for men and how many for women, and then come back and tell me that they aren't brainwashed by advertising to believe that they have to do this.

Likewise the perfume, make-up and accessory shops that they inhabit, are there equivalent for men ?

Yes you are absolutely correct, women, and some very young women, are often pressurised into thinking that their breasts are "wrong" and need correction in order to comply with a "standard" - there was one on TV yesterday morning, a young girl singer with a girl band (forget the name, didn't even recognise the name), who had breast implants after she breastfed her child and thought that they "looked wrong" afterwards, its vanity, but yes, its enforced vanity.

I just wonder if private clinics started pushing testicle implants and the idea that large testicles would make men more attractive to women, would men re-mortgage their houses to get them or just stuff a sock down their pants ?

however, this is not a routine situation - ultimately, the women with these implants have a higher risk of breast cancer, and the NHS will be liable to treat that. It will probably be worth taking the risk of paying now to avoid a bigger cost in a few years.

While not the appropriate grade of silicone, I thought neither UK nor Australian medical authorities considered it to be toxic or carcinogenic to surrounding tissue in case of a leak? Didn't the whole cancer scare come out of one woman in France who contracted breast cancer and had a leaky implant?

Increasingly, yes.



I can't remember with certainty which group came up with the research (it was something like the NSPCC), but it was reported a couple of years ago that girls as young as six were being (negatively) critical about their bodies and girls as young as nine were dieting. It's frankly Jesuitical – get 'em young and keep 'em for life – as far as the entire beauty, fashion and diet industries are concerned. And yes, the male market has been being targeted for some time now too.



But then we get into the relative positions of men and women within society, and the relative treatments of both by employers, the media etc on the basis of looks. And, as we've discussed more than once here, that's not a level playing field.

Taking your point, though, there are plenty of adverts around offering ways to increase penis size – I presume some men must be buying into these. So the insecurity is there too.

That was my impression too.

I also think that the media have been somewhat instrumental in whipping up hysteria. When I asked Emma whethere she had PIP implants, she replied that she had no idea but thought that as she had a cheap boob job done in Belgium, it was a fair bet that they were PIP. When I asked if she was concerned, her response was "not in the slightest". Now given that she is almost paranoid when it comes to health & hygene issues, I did think this somewhat unusual.

In any other situation, a basic risk assessment would probably conclude that there's nothing to get excited about.

Ditto.

I'm no expert but have done a little digging. It seems likely that these implants have a failure rate - ie they leak - of maybe 7%.

If I had some, that is not good odds. At all.

One Guy Sterne is a Consultant Cosmetic Surgeon and he says:


He also is one of several indicators that many cosmetic surgeons knew of the issues being steadily raised about PIP implants - as long as 5 years ago - and it seems the prudent avoided them



Anyone who wants to minimise or dismiss the potential health risks and problems of a ruptured implant should have a look at this surgeon's site, [url=http://www.consultantplasticsurgeon.co.uk/pip-implants-information{WARNING- SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES}[/url and then try to minimise it.

If you paid privately for them for reasons of a cosmetic nature then the only way the taxpayer should be involved is in an emergency removal if the go pop. If its just a case of replacing them with another type because of worry, then do what you did before, pay for it yourself

Not because of "worry", but because of the statistic that out of 40,000 implants, 7% - that is, 2,800 - WILL leak. That would be not too far off one woman in every 14, facing consequences which a consultant surgeon calls "significant".

Let's say you had a model of car, and had had the standard brakes upgraded to a bigger and better set, which were guaranteed for 10 years. Then you found out that due to substandard parts (but which were imported under a 'government approved' scheme) approx.7% of them would suffer a total brake failure at some point. Would you have the same attitude to that?

Well indeed. And then – if we're being simply hard-nosed about it – does the NHS refuse to treat anyone who, as a result, gets cancer, on the basis that it's 'self-inflicted'?

I repeat – I am absolutely of the opinion that the companies/practices that carried out the work in the first place should remove the implants when those women who had them come and ask for that.

But if, say, a company that did that has already gone bust (so to speak), then I wonder if some of the contributors here would say that the women can't have them removed unless they themselves cough up first? Even if it's possible it will cost more in the long term because of the quite serious possible health consequences?

Don't get me wrong: I'm not 'pleased' by this as an idea. But then I'm equally not 'pleased;' by a society that places so much stress on how one sex in particular looks. And there are plenty of people on this forum who have, when that question has arisen in the past, effectively shrugged and said, 'that's the way it is – deal with it'.

Where does this 7% come from? I've not seen any figures that suggest such a high failure arte

That figure was the one said to be taken from one of the big providers, Transform, who said that that the failure rate of PIP implants it had used in procedures since 2006 which use industrial grade silicone rather than medical grade stood at 7 per cent.

On their website at the moment is the following comment:


So it's 7% Jim - but not as we know it.

You suprise me with that.

Even you should accept that is a very small sample group to be able to extrapolate any reasonably accurate figures

Not happy with the "even you", but letting that pass, I would say that a failure rate of 7% of 108 since 2005 is a scary failure rate, and would point out that that is only in a few short years. I would also say that if 7% of new or relatively new inserts are failing, then with age and wear and tear, I would expect the failure rate of the 108 to increase with time.

I would certainly think it absurd to suggest that, of the 108, despite 7 or so having already failed, not a single one of the rest ever will.

I would also say that given leaks are by no means always easily diagnosed, the only way to be certain in any given case would be by MRI scan, and those are pretty costly. I think it much more likely than not that there are women who do have leaking PIP implants, but don't yet know it.

So the issue which concerns me is not one of extrapolation "reasonably accurate figures" but of how worried you should be if you have some of those things inside you. I'd bet even you would be.

I see the ambulance chasers are out - "PIP Implant Support - no win no fee" ads at the bottom of the page

Snide comment, that. Of course each claim is also a potential paying job for a lawyer, but do you therefore think that innocent victims of such cockups should be left entirely to their own devices, then? What is wrong with advertising to them a free method of access to justice? Or should such access only be for those who can afford to pay for it?

I haven't seen you criticising the ambulance-chasing adverts of all the motor insurance companies who absurdly, given that they have all been losing money for decades, spend millions advertising for your insurance dollar with fat opera singers, meerkats, red phones and the rest.

I also haven't seen you criticising any of the cosmetic surgery clinics who advertise extensively, often in targeted lifestyle magazines, but increasingly on TV too.

I wonder therefore why you chose to make THAT point? If someone is able to offer these women specialist help, at no cost to them, why would you think there is something wrong with that?

Do you have similar views about adverts for other distress purchases such as motor breakdown, faulty boilers, etc.? Or have you swallowed the insurer/government line that many victims only need an apology and a bunch of flowers?

Sorry to disappoint and I realise that genuine real-life opinion may not help your argument but, as previously stated, it's a fair bet that Emma has PIP implants and she ain't worried.

But please don't let that divert you from your scaremongering

The genuine real-life opinion of the French government is that they will pay for 30,000 French women to have their PIP implants removed. In France the official rupture rates with the PIP implants is five per cent. Are the French government scaremongering?

There is a group action about to start in the UK. Many women with PIP implants are said by lawyers in the court case to have experienced "agonising problems, including ruptures and leakages". I suggest that this is a bit beyond scaremongering.

Tim Goodacre, president of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS), an Oxford University lecturer and a member of the government's panel investigating the scandal said that if the panel confirmed the findings of rupture rates "found by the country’s biggest cosmetic surgery company – in which almost one in 14 implants had leaked – then they should all be taken out in every case". Is he scaremongering?

French medical device regulatory authority Afssaps, which suggests a failure rate of about 5% in France, says:

Sorry to disappoint and I realise that genuine real-life opinion may not help your argument but, as previously stated, if it were me or my missus, I would be worried.

But please don't let that divert you from your dismissive claptrap, as I'm sure you know better than the French government, or the doctors.