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Fair Hearing for Breast Implants?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,148667,00.html

Thursday, February 24, 2005

By Steven MilloyA Food and Drug Administration advisory panel is again preparing to review the science concerning the safety of silicone breast implants (search).

Though the scientific data will, once again, point to the safety of silicone implants, it’s not clear that the science alone will drive the panel’s decision.

In October 2003, an FDA advisory panel had voted to approve silicone breast implants, but trial lawyer-backed activists succeeded in creating a circus of the process. In 2004, the FDA decided to delay approval of silicone breast implants pending the collection of more safety data. The new data are in and, to no one’s surprise, silicone implants once again appear to be safe.

In an October 2004 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology, National Cancer Institute researchers detected no conclusive evidence that silicone implants caused connective tissue disorders (search) -- the allegation that ignited the silicone scare 20 years ago.

Researchers reported in a December 2004 study published in Breast Cancer Research that mastectomy patients with silicone breast implants had similar, if not slightly less, sickness and death than mastectomy (search) patients with other types of breast implants. National Cancer Institute-funded researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 2004 that, while breast implants may slightly lower the sensitivity of mammography, "there is no evidence that this results in more advanced disease at diagnosis compared with women without augmentation."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,148667,00.html