Thinking about the Newsnight item on Silicone Breast Implants

I watched the Newsnight item about Silicone Breast Implants yesterday. In the introductory part Science Editor Susan Watts explained how the MHRA regulatory agency had been given information about the substandard implants made of industrial quality silicone, but had adopted the policy of taking no action until they heard of something actually going wrong.

Then the focus changed to Jeremy Paxman and Health Minister Anne Milton talking with a group of women who were in the unhappy position of having had the dodgy implants inserted and wishing that they hadn't. Most of them were keen to speak and to complain about not getting sufficient help to put matters right. Some told why they had chosen to have the implants in the first place. I was shocked to hear one woman explain that she was ashamed of her small breasts when she was out shopping! - Out shopping! - Ashamed? - Who on earth needs breast implants in order to go shopping? - I truly was shocked.

There is no need to go through the trauma/pain/expense/risk/mutilation of this surgery. A woman can, after all, wear a padded bra if she feels the need when dressed. And if she thinks she will appear more desirable with surgically enlarged breasts when naked then, in my opinion, she would do well to consider whether the people who value her for her measurements rather than for 'herself' are worth bothering about. Certainly not worth taking risks with her health, a person's most precious possession.

For many years women struggled in various ways and against great opposition and powerful prejudice to escape from being thought of primarily as sex objects and adjuncts to men, entitled to less regard and lower pay than men. "A woman's place was in the home/kitchen/bedroom/wrong." They struggled to achieve equal pay, equal educational and employment opportunities, parity of esteem, etc. and to be treated as men's equals. I am so sad that so many women now appear to be wanting to return to their subordinate positions as sex objects rather than individual people with minds. I frankly cannot understand the desire for surgically enlarged breasts, preposterously over-priced handbags, dangerously. totteringly high-heeled expensive monstrosities purporting to be shoes and weirdly-shaped and decorated fingernails. Why waste great chunks of precious life on this nonsense?

Susan Watts' Newsnight report about blood safety warnings ignored by health professionals administering blood products to haemophiliacs in the 70s/80s

I watched BBC2's Newsnight report, compellingly presented by Susan Watts last night. She had interviewed some of the people involved in this tragedy. If the effect on other viewers was similar to the effect on me, then there will be many people feeling outraged at the appalling risks that health professionals knowingly and avoidably took with the lives and health of haemophilia sufferers and with the happiness and wellbeing of their families. This is a national scandal of monumental proportions, but has been subjected to years of the standard lies/cover-up/evasion that routinely feature in cases of medical negligence and bureaucratic/governmental dereliction of duty. - If the perpetrators and others associated with these horrifying events are still alive, I hope that the inquiry will be able to nail them and that, late in the day as it is, they will suffer condign punishment. And I hope that the government will give generously from taxpayers' money to the innocent victims and the family members who are still alive.

I URGE YOU TO READ THE REPORT. - Here is an extract from it:

"Evidence UK scientists ignored warnings that could have prevented people with haemophilia being given contamined blood has been seen by the BBC.

The Newsnight programme has seen documents suggesting experts were aware of the threat at an early stage, but transfusions were not stopped.

In the 1970s and 1980s, 4,500 UK haemophilia patients were exposed to lethal viruses in blood products.

Two thousand have since died of either Hepatitis C or HIV.

Successive governments have resisted attempts to hold a full inquiry. As a result campaigners have organised a private inquiry which will hold its first hearing on Wednesday. It is generally accepted that many people with haemophilia became infected from supplies of the clotting agent Factor 8 from abroad. "

As I write, there is also a video recording of the programme on the BBC website.