Panel confirms no major illness tied to implants.
A committee of scientists appointed by the Institute of Medicine has stated that silicone breast implants are responsible for local scarring and infections but are not the cause of systemic diseases. Kolata G. Panel confirms no major illness tied to implants. Dr. Stuart Bondurant, professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dr. Virginia Ernster, professor of epidemiology at the University of California at San Francisco, are chairpersons of the committee whose report will be released June 22. Not yet published.