Enhancement: Of breasts and bottom lines
Over at Our Bodies, Our Blog, Christine Cupaiuolo takes on the global pharmaceutical company that makes Botox and breast implants. The post, titled "Re-Framing Empowerment: Allergan, Breast Implants and a New, Improved You," looks first at Allergan's new marketing campaign.
The company is busy trying to portray "plastic bags filled with silicone or saline solution" as "sources of power, freedom, individuality and self-confidence." Its approach: Make "injecting, slicing and rearranging body parts" sound like treating yourself to a day at the spa. "Nearly 400,000 women did something fabulous for themselves last year," Allergan rhapsodizes in ads for its "Natrelle collection of breast implants."
Many women with breast implants have found them distinctly not fabulous. But studies on their risks somehow don't reflect the growing number of horror stories documented by the blogs, websites, and documentaries to which OBOB links. Could part of the explanation lie in the financial connections to the breast implant industry enjoyed by the authors of key studies on breast implant safety?
A review of previous studies recently published in the journal Annals of Plastic Surgery concluded that breast implants are safe. But the National Research Center for Women & Families notes that all four of the review's authors have financial ties to the breast implant industry, and that studies by the National Cancer Institute and the FDA "found significant increases in several illnesses among women with implants."
Previously on Biopolitical Times:
