Burst Balloon

There's no proof breast implants cause serious ills

The question of whether silicone breast implants are dangerous is essentially a scientific one. Yet in more than a decade of claims and counter-claims, lawsuits by the thousand and cash settlements in the millions of dollars, actual science has played an almost insignificant role. Women who say they've been harmed insist there's a cause-and-effect relationship between leaky implants and major immune-system disorders; manufacturers swear their implants are safe. But even though the FDA finally ordered the devices off the market in 1992, neither side has offered much proof for its position.

Now comes a report that at last casts some...

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