Breast implant fiasco
There are two things which the government has got completely wrong in its attempts to deal with concerns about PIP breast implants. It is fuelling anxiety rather than alleviating it and its notions of the responsibilities of private providers are muddled and incorrect. Everybody knows that health treatment is only provided when clinically indicated. Never before has an indication for an operation been simply "the patient is worried". So it makes no sense at all to simultaneously say that PIP implants are safe but if a patient is worried they will be removed. Why remove something which isn't dangerous? This massively mixed message could hardly be more unhelpful. From everything I can see of the science so far there is no evidence that PIP implants present any higher risk than any other kind, in spite of being described in scarey terms such "industrial". Possibly they have a somewhat higher risk of rupture but that could be dealt with as and when and anyway the