14 Years Later, the Real Boobs in This Controversy (the Trial Lawyers and the Junk Scientists) Are Finally Overruled

From a subscription-only editorial in Monday’s Wall Street Journal:

It took 14 years, but science finally trumped politics Friday, with the Food and Drug Administration’s lifting of its longstanding ban on silicone-gel breast implants. Women will at last be allowed to make their own decisions about cosmetic surgery. This is especially welcome news for mastectomy patients.

The FDA removed them from the market in 1992 during the reign of Commissioner David Kessler, a politically ambitious bureaucrat who was courting support from the left. The agency cited health concerns that have long since been debunked, and silicone-gel breast implants have since been at the heart of one of the trial bar’s biggest scams. Class-action lawsuits raked in billions of dollars and drove implant makers out of the business. Dow Corning went into bankruptcy. Throughout it all, the trial bar was abetted by a gullible press, only too happy to ignore the science and play up sensationalist stories of supposed “victims.”

….. As far back as 1994, doctors at the Mayo Clinic found “no association between breast implants and the connective-tissue diseases and other disorders” that they studied. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine found no systemic health problems caused by implants. In 2003, an FDA advisory panel advised that the ban be removed.

Last week’s FDA decision notes that women with implants still run the risk of complications from leakage — a risk that the industry has never denied and that patients have always been informed of. In approving implants made by two companies, Allergan Inc. and Mentor Corp., the FDA urged patients to get regular MRI exams. That’s surely wise, but in any case it’s a risk that patients and their doctors are perfectly capable of weighing against the benefits of the procedure.

One of the ugliest aspects of the breast-implant controversy has been the irresponsibility of the feminist movement, whose championship of a woman’s right to “choose” doesn’t extend to breast implants. It’s all the more outrageous given the tens of thousands of breast-cancer victims seeking reconstructive surgery each year.

Junk science has real consequences that affect real people, their health, their well-being, their jobs, their companies, and their livelihoods. The reversal is in essence an admission that the whole sorry saga of silicon implant demonization should never happened.

The editorial goes on to note that the National Organization of Women (NOW) wants to reverse the reversal. Considering who these so-called feminists are literally in bed with, the Journal’s description of NOW as “irresponsible” is the kindest word you can use.