Some 30,000 women a year are seeking some kind of reconstruction after surgery. Now, thanks to Washington's fringe-science vigilantes, many women believe that the only safe end of breast cancer is irreparable mutilation. A whole lot more women, in fact, than are ever likely to be killed by silicone itself. The FDA knows this. Norplant, the new contraceptive that the FDA recently approved with much fanfare, is delivered from a silicone implant.
Silicone is used in intravenous tubing and in shunts for delivering chemotherapy.
Some 30,000 American men have silicone-based testicular implants. Science can never prove negative propositions absolutely. But if silicone presents any serious chemical hazards to the human body, they should already be apparent. The fact is, they aren't. We are dealing here not with science but with Washington's policy pundits and publicists, who prosper by making mountains out of molehills.