Tuesday 10 December 2013

Faulty breast implants fraud trial: Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) boss Jean-Claude Mas is jailed for four years - Mirror Online


Founder of faulty breast implants firm PIP is jailed for four years in France


An estimated 47,000 British women had been given implants containing industrial-grade silicone made by Poly Implant Prothese boss Jean-Claude Mas
The founder of a French firm that made dodgy breast implants used by 47,000 British women was today jailed for four years.
Poly Implant Prothese boss Jean-Claude Mas, 74, was convicted of aggravated fraud after using industrial-grade silicone in implants that were sold worldwide.
Mas, dubbed “the sorcerer’s apprentice of implants” by prosecutors, plans to appeal, his lawyer said.
Four other ex-PIP staff were also convicted in Marseille and given lesser sentences.
The scandal first broke in 2010 when doctors noticed abnormally high rupture rates in PIP implants.
Aglobal health scare erupted with some 300,000 women in 65 countries believed to have received the faulty implants.
Mas was also ordered to pay a £63,000 fine and has been permanently banned from working in medical services or running a company.
Isabelle Traeger, who received a PIP implant and attended the trial, said four years in prison was not enough.
She said: “They explained what was in them [the implants]. Inflammable substances, substances to make your car work, and that at a certain point they said to the engineer who made them, ‘How did you make them? How did you mix together these substances?’ And he said, ‘You use your best guess’.
“Can you imagine? It’s a matter of chance. A dollop more, a bit more, a bit less. And he’ll get four years for that? For what is put in your body using one’s best guess. We don’t even give horses their food according to a ‘best guess’.”
With over 7,000 women registered as plaintiffs, the trial was one of France’s biggest ever legal cases.
The defendants admitted using the industrial-grade silicone but denied the company’s implants posed any health risks.
More than 7,500 women worldwide have reported ruptures in the implants and in France alone 15,000 have had the PIP implants replaced.
But health officials in various countries have said they are not toxic and do not increase the risk of breast cancer.
UK health chiefs said there was no need for routine removal - but later agreed to replace the implants to put women’s minds at rest.


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