PATIENTS with faulty breast implants claim private clinics have made them sign gagging orders and waive their legal rights before they will carry out removal operations.
As many as 4000 women in Scotland may have been given breast implants manufactured by the now-closed French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), which are filled with non-medical-grade silicone and could be toxic if ruptured. All are thought to have received them from private firms.
Campaign group PIP Implants Scotland said private clinics had been imposing the restrictions on patients but Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said women with faulty breast implants can turn to the NHS if the private firm which provided them attaches "unacceptable conditions" to their removal.
PIP Implants Scotland's lawyer Patrick McGuire, of Thompsons Solicitors, said this was "a major step forward" for patients. He said clinics may try to refuse treatment, or impose unacceptable conditions, to pass the bill on to the NHS and that this would be "morally unacceptable". He added: "As a matter of consumer law, the women have all of the rights and remedies open to any other consumer goods."
The group met Ms Sturgeon at Holyrood to make their case for a public inquiry yesterday. Campaign spokeswoman Trisha Devine said: "We haven't quite got there yet. We still have more questions but today has been helpful."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article