Dow Corning

Dow Corning, when you hear the name what comes to mind? Silicon gaskets? Personal care products, like lipsticks and sunscreens? How about theme park animatronics? No, for most of us, only one thing comes to mind, breast implants! Dow Chemical was founded in 1943 through a joint partnership between Dow Chemical and Corning GlassWork to develop silicones for commercial applications. Through the mid-fifties, Dow Corning made over 600 products which included lubricants, sealants and resins causing the factory to double in size three times. During this time, the scientists at Dow Corning were thinking of medical applications for silicone products and they developed several prototype implantable devices. In the early 1960’s, Dow Corning engineers developed the first prototype breast implant by encapsulating a firm-density silicone gel within a silicone rubber bag. This implant, named the Cronin implant, became the first to be used in reconstructive surgery involving breast cancer patients who had a mastectomy. Though not required by law to test their products, Dow Corning, exercising good business practice, had an independent laboratory test the safety of its medical grade silicones. The laboratory reported that there was no link to cancer being caused by silicones. They did state that laboratory rats, that had been injected, suffered chronic inflammation of the liver, spleen, pancreas, lymph nodes and other organs due to the silicone becoming lodged in them. Dow Corning was not concerned about this side affect since their implants did not involve a direct injection of silicone fluid. It was in 1975 that Dow Corning, due to two smaller competitors eroding their market share, engineered a new a new softer, more pliable implant, dubbed flo-gel. These new implants were not without problems. There was a 50 percent loss rate on the manufacturing line due to thin membranes and contaminated silicone. Several samples sent to medical conventions and doctor’s offices had also received less than stellar reviews. Among the gripes were, oily greasy feeling, the implant sweating and instances of the silicone actually bleeding through its outer membrane. Overall the doctors liked the implants. It was during the eighties that implant sales, due to the extreme rise in cosmetic surgery, really took off. In 1990 nearly 80 percent of all surgical implants performed were cosmetic in nature, performed on perfectly healthy breasts. Of course, there were some negatives to the booming implant sales. During the eighties, there were a few cases of ruptured or leaking implants, which made there way into the courts resulting in payouts from Dow Corning to the women involved. Couple this with the fact that in the early 1990’s, nearly 600 cases of autoimmune disorders had surfaced from women who had received implants. This lead to the FDA running tests, which resulted in the banning of silicone implants in 1992. If this wasn’t enough for Dow Corning, they also had to contend with the rising lawsuits, that numbered 137 in 1991, 3500 in 1992 and in excess of 19,000 in 1995. It was also in that year that Dow Corning filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now Dow Corning is left with the possibility of having to pay out 3.2 billion dollars, and if a certain Texas lawyer has it his way a lot more than that, to patients affected by their implants. (Hazelton, 1998; Post, 1999, p. 339-350)

Let us take a deeper look into the problems that Dow Corning discovered concerning the implants. Dow performed numerous experiments throughout the life of the silicone implants and from the beginning they did not release the results to the public and the ones they did release were not entirely truthful. In some of the early public releases, they even neglected some of the testing. In 1954, it was reported that the Pro Silicone implants had a high order of toxicity, which can cause several health problems, including organ damage. As time went on the problems increased with the more information that was discovered. Plastic Surgeons began to complain that the implants were oily and appeared to leak. This was caused by the lining of the silicon implant losing its strength after sitting on the shelf for a lengthy time. Dow then instructed their salesmen to wash them and pat them dry before presenting the implants to buyers. This would cover-up the fact that they had a leakage problem of which Dow discovered and revealed in a secret company memo. To further this already tangled web, the patient brochures stated that the laboratory studies proved that implants last a lifetime even though there was no actual scientific evidence to support this. It was also believed that the implants could spontaneously rupture and the silicone leaking from this could produce immune system disorders. The patient would also not receive health insurance coverage if it were discovered they had a ruptured silicone breast implant.