Professional Theft – PIP Breast Implants
It has been reported that Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director has looked in to the sub-standard breast implants supplied by French company PIP and has said that despite their double-than-normal failure rate, they did not appear to be linked with increased levels of cancer.
It would appear that where the NHS is concerned, the organisation has offered to remove any implants it made, but the problem in England lies with the 95 % of women, who had the operation done privately.
I’ll give an example here. Suppose I had taken my Jaguar to an approved dealer after the air-conditioning pump had failed and it had been replaced by a sub-standard import, non-approved part. If I’d have noticed this, I’d have asked the dealer to replace it with the approved part at no charge and I suspect that Jaguar would have backed up my demand.
The NHS seems to be fulfilling its similar obligations, but many private clinics seem to be washing their hands of the whole thing. Surely, to use a sub-standard part and probably charge for the kosher one is theft. I call this professional theft, where the customer is milked by a professional, who should know better.
And when the report from Professor Keogh doesn’t take a robust attitude to those of his profession, who didn’t put the best interest of the patients first and insist they replace the offending implants, some might think he is putting the doctors before the patients.
In my view these women should have their implants removed and replaced and those done outside the NHS, should be paid for by the skimping clinics and doctors involved.
The Greek Economy and Breast Implants
One lady, who had the faulty PIP breast implants, has just said on Radio 5, that the surgeon who did the operation, can’t replace them with new ones, as he has gone to work in Greece.
Obviously, more than the obvious is going bust in that country.
£43,000 For Breast Enlargements
I had to have a chuckle at this story in the Standard last night, with a headline of, Swindler faked death in £43,000 scam to give his wife bigger breasts.
He’s now in Bangkok with yet another wife.
As it was a benefits fraud that paid for the breast operation, do we get our money or the implants back?
The treadmill and the crank were made for this man, as he would apear to be a serious danger to women, the country and probably himself as well.
A Quick Calculation
A doctor has just said that each faulty breast implant replacement will cost about £16,000
If there are 40,000 faulty implants in the UK, that works out at £640 million
My wife died of a rare cancer and that money spent on cancer research would help a lot more people and not just the vain and the stupid!
If you feel strongly about this, there’s an e-petition on the government’s web site.
It Appears There’s No Breast Implant Database
For every car my father owned, he kept a book in which he wrote all the service details and modifications he made. He was typical of many in the 1950s and 1960s, who looked after all details of their cars.
Nowadays we don’t do that, but if you buy a vehicle these days and have it serviced properly, everything is recorded on a computer database. And when you buy a second hand car, you can usually have access to this data to check, you’re not buying a ringer.
According to a letter in The Times today from the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, there is no such requirement for comprehensive details to be kept on breast implants and other cosmetic surgical procedures. However, the letter states that for joint replacements, there is a very successful National Joint Registry, that is analysed to detect problems before they become serious.
Why is there no registry for breast implants and cosmetic surgery? Obviously, such a registry would put up the cost of the surgery! If this discouraged the vane idiots, it might not be a bad idea, but I suspect it wouldn’t as they’d just go somewhere outside of the reach of the registry.
It would appear that many of us take better care of our cars than our bodies!
More On Those French Breast Implants
The phone-in on Radio 5, this morning was all about the failing French breast implants. I’ve made my views clear before and my views haven’t changed.
As the phone-in proceeded, two thoughts occurred to me.
In the first place, if I do something that is dangerous, like driving a car or flying in an aeroplane, it is prudent to insure myself in case anything goes wrong.
Having an operation is a dangerous business, especially in a non A&E Hospital. A friend had a hip transplant privately in a good private clinic, but it all went wrong and he died. The general feeling is that if he’d had the same operation in the local hospital with A&E, he would have survived.
So before you have an operation, you should have insurance in case it all goes wrong! For most operations done by the NHS, this is the case. Another friend had a hip transplant that failed in I think Addenbrooke’s, so it was replaced and the second one is much better.
Judging by many of the women who spoke this morning, many had their implants inserted in clinics, where profit was the motive, not good care. Some can’t even have been that good, as they have now folded. But where is the insurance? Obviously, the patients didn’t check what would happen if all went wrong. But I suppose proper insurance, would have meant that the operation would have been too expensive.
The other thought occurred to me, when a doctor on the programme, said that implants of any sort, only rarely rupture.
C never had any form of plastic surgery, but she did have breast cancer.
It is interesting to note, how she might have got breast cancer. She had a Mercedes coupe, which could not be described as anything but a quality car. She was hit by another vehicle and the air-bag deployed as it should.
It left her with a large and deep bruise on her left breast.
And where did she get the cancer? In the same place as the bruise. She mentioned this to her oncologist and he said that he’d seen this sort of thing before. I also searched the Internet and found women who claimed their breast cancer occurred, where they had been hit hard by a tennis ball.
So when a doctor claims that a breast implant can’t rupture, I’m dubious!
Why Should I Pick Up The Tab For The Vanity or Stupidity of Others?
It looks like the French breast implants are not fit for purpose and that the French government will pay for their removal according to this report.
The report also says that there are up to 40,000 women with these implants in the UK and 250 have already contacted their lawyers.
Obviously, there are two classes of women, who have plastic surgery on their breasts; those that have suffered from breast cancer or perhaps an accident and the vane.
I don’t see why I should pay for any rectification surgery for the latter. After all they were stupid enough to have the operation in the first place and should accept the consequences.
The NHS is the National Health Service and those that bring problems on themselves should make an extra contribution.
C once did a divorce for a plastic surgeon. He told her, never to underestimate peoples’ vanity. He didn’t bother, as it made him a fair amount of money and enabled him to do operations that mattered on cancer and accident victims and children with birth defects.
In the current case it would appear that in the end, the real winners will be the lawyers. Just as they were in this other case.
The Anonymous Widower 