Petition
Silicone Breast Implants (PE1378)
Item 5 is the committee’s consideration of petition PE1378 for the second time. As members will recall, the committee agreed at its meeting on 13 September 2011 to write to the Scottish Government and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for further information. Responses have been received from both organisations and a further response—which is included in members’ papers—has been received from the petitioner. In addition, a letter from Rhoda Grant was sent round late last night.
I invite the committee to consider whether it wishes to close the petition on the grounds of the information that has been received from the Scottish Government and the MHRA or whether members wish to propose an alternative approach. I invite comments from members.
I recommend to the committee an alternative approach. The information that we have received is vague and misleading, and I think that it would be beneficial if we conducted an inquiry into the matter.
We do not have a huge amount of information. Silicone disease is not recognised as a condition, but it has profound and long-lasting effects on women, and yet there is no central recording of instances of leakage from implants. I think that we need more information and that we should conduct either a full-blown inquiry or a short inquiry into the issue.
Women’s issues are sometimes ignored in society, but the Parliament has had an exceptionally good record since its inception of dealing with issues that have not been dealt with anywhere else. However, we need to take cognisance of Scotland’s incident reporting and investigation centre, which
“advised that, to date, there has been one adverse incident involving a silicone breast implant which was reported in 2003.”
Far be it from me to suggest that we close a petition—I am always reluctant to do that, especially on this type of issue—but, if the committee was to go down the route of an inquiry, I think that people would need to challenge that information. Are we being told that there are many more incidents and that the centre’s information is not true? I would worry about that, to be frank. Before we make our minds up, I lay that on the table for us to think about carefully.
I would not be averse to holding an inquiry, but it would have to be short and tease out some of the issues that Mary Fee has identified. As Gil Paterson has said, it is the Parliament’s role to take seriously petitions that bring genuine issues before us. We could have a one-off evidence session.
12:15
I go along with Gil Paterson’s comment. Yes, there are points in the petition, but we have written to the cabinet secretary and to Sir Kent Woods, who said:
“Patients also need to take responsibility for their own health and understand the implications of any medical procedure they elect to undertake.”
We have all seen on different television programmes what has happened in America and possibly what has happened over here. I take Gil Paterson’s point that there is only one reported instance.
I also take on board Rhoda Grant’s letter. She wants us
“to raise awareness of the dangers of silicone breast implants.”
People should know the dangers—the same applies to the danger of smoking. You knowingly do it to your body. I do not take away from that, but then she goes on to
“urge the UK Government to ban the use of such implants and review the 3-year time bar rule for medical injury.”
I do not take away from the petition. I think that there are some serious implications, but there are also some serious questions that I do not think an inquiry would solve. It would not be a short inquiry; it would be a long inquiry. I do not think that what we would discover at the end of it would satisfy anyone, because it is well proved that, sadly, when ladies have these things done to their bodies, these things burst. They do burst; we know that.
We are trying to get a feeling around the table.
As I did last week, I shall put my health librarian’s hat on when reviewing the information. I did not have time to do a literature review but, given the information that we have had from both IRIC and the MHRA, which will have used peer-reviewed systematic analysis before they came to their conclusions, I am happy with the letters that we have had from the cabinet secretary and from the MHRA.
I do not like to say this, but I have some opposition to what Richard Lyle just said. We cannot equate the use of silicone implants with the dangers of tobacco use. The evidence is there on the dangers of tobacco use; the evidence is not there on silicone implants. He used the phrase, “Well proved”. The danger is not well proved, which is why I make the statement that I am making. As Mary Fee said, there is an alternative way of approaching this. One way that I suggest—again with my health librarian’s hat on—is for the Scottish Parliament information centre to do a literature review for us on the weighted evidence on rupture and any health complaints, post-rupture, from silicone.
That is an alternative. It falls short of what the petition requests, so we would dispose of the petition on that basis.
The literature review could come back and give us the worry that there is evidence but, from my reading, the evidence is not there.
I understand.
Closure is important and sometimes closure means that the petitioner is not going to be particularly happy. It may be a very serious issue for that person, but sometimes the evidence is not there. It has been suggested that the evidence to support this petition may not be there. I whole-heartedly agree with the course that Fiona McLeod recommended to the committee and I hope that it will give us the evidence required to bring closure. I recommend that the petition be closed on the basis that, if the evidence is not there and the problem needs to be looked at over a longer period, we can always bring the issue back.
Has everybody had an opportunity to speak?
I advocate that we close the petition.
In making my point about cigarette smoking and the use of silicone implants, all I was saying is that you knowingly do these things to yourself. Indeed, on pages 8 and 9 of the briefing, the petitioner says:
“Despite what you may read to the contrary, NO implant will last forever. Nothing can prevent eventual rupture. And nothing can remove the silicone gel that is set free to travel round your body. It will settle in your system and wreak havoc with your immune system.
Ignoring and denying the consequences of rupture is neither reasonable nor intelligent. It only needs common sense”—
Okay. The point has been made.
But here is the point that I am trying to make. As the petitioner says,
“Dismissing the facts and placing a device akin to (commonly described) a ticking time-bomb inside the human body, is completely irresponsible”.
I had a chance to read the papers last night as well. We have reduced things to the question whether there is evidence and have had an indication in that respect. I see that Mary Fee wants to come back in.
I take it from what has been said that members are minded to support Fiona McLeod’s suggestion and are minded not to have an inquiry. That is fair enough and I would go along with that view. However, I point out that on page 6 of paper 3, Kent Woods says:
“Good medical practice should mean clinicians communicate with their patients”.
There are two reasons to get implants: for medical reasons after a mastectomy and for augmentation. I have two friends who have implants—one had augmentation after surgery and another wanted bigger boobs. After I received the papers, I asked them about the information that they had received from their clinicians. Both said that the sum total of information that they were given was a leaflet that they were handed.
To be fair, I point out that that issue is also mentioned in the evidence.
To make progress on this matter, I will not go round the table again. Instead, I will simply ask the committee whether it agrees to dispose of the petition—in other words, to close it—and whether it is content with Fiona McLeod’s proposal to seek from SPICe a literature review of the evidence. Given the current evidence, I suggest that we could put down a marker and write to the cabinet secretary and the MHRA, asking to be made aware of any significant facts or developments that might subsequently come to light. That package of measures should allow us to keep an eye on the issue. Does the committee agree to close the petition on that basis?
Members indicated agreement.
We move to agenda item 6, which, as members might recall, we agreed to take in private.
12:23
Meeting continued in private until 13:06.