Makers of faulty PIP breast implants go on trial
As five executives from French company PIP that made substandard breast implants go on trial for alleged fraud, three hundred women involved in the case attend court.
PIP’s founder and chief executive, Jean-Claude Mas (pictured below), has admitted filling the implants with an unapproved, industrial-grade silicone gel.
More than 300,000 women around the world, 47,000 from the UK, were fitted with implants manufactured by Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), which was closed down in 2010.
Action was taken against the company after some women’s implants ruptured, leading to a health scare.
Mas and the four other PIP executives are charged with aggravated fraud and risk maximum prison terms of five years each, plus fines, for selling the implants around the world from 2001 to 2010.
The trial in Marseille, which involves 5,000 women plaintiffs and is expected to last until 14 May, is taking place in a conference centre in order to accomodate everyone involved. Three hundred attended court today.
Tomassine Catalano, who alleges that one of her PIP implants began to leak four years after its insertion, said outside the court that victims were scared and angry.
“We had foreign bodies put inside us that were flawed … we could have maybe died from it. The anger is because we were tricked,” said said.
The scandal, which was revealed after inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone outside the PIP factory in 2010, sparked worldwide panic.
The French government recommended removal of the implants due to an abnormally high rupture rate. Half of French women with PIP implants, 15,000 people, have already opted for removal, either because of rupture or as a precaution.
Mas has told police that 75 per cent of PIP’s implants contained the homemade gel, which was never been approved by regulators, although he denies it was unsafe. He and the other executives deny the charges.
Britain
A review in Britain last year concluded that PIP implants did not pose a threat to human health, but had double the rupture rate of alternative products - 15-30 per cent after 10 years.
It said routine removal was unnecessary, but that women who were worried should be able to have them taken out.
Most women had their operations carried out privately. If a woman, in consultation with her doctor, decides to have her implants removed and a private clinic refuses to do so or has gone out of business, the NHS will extract, but not replace, them.