Opposing Digits

- Dr. Marc Lappe
Chapter Eight - An Overview

By the 1930s, no one would dream of intentionally putting raw silica
into the human body because silica dust had been shown to cause acute
illness and death or a chronic lung-damaging disease known as
silicosis when the dust was breathed. When silicon dioxide in the form
of crystalline silicon is injected into the body, it stimulates a
florid inflammatory response. It is so potent an inflammatory agent
that many laboratories use it as a "booster" or adjuvant to provoke
the most massive immunologic response possible in test animals.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has since found that silicone
breast implants were "intentionally adulterated" with silica that was
added as a filler in the envelope to change the properties of the
silicone in the eslastomer envelope. In the 1940s, Dow Chemical
Company acquired the patent rights and gave them to an independent
subsidiary formed between Dow Chemical and the Corning Glass
Corporation, the Dow-Corning Corporation of Midland, Michigan.
(Corning had the most expertise in the world in dealing
with silica, the basic ingredient of glass. Although the original
1966 patent described these implants as being a totally implantable,
nonreactive device to be placed within the human body, adequate safety
testing or formal trials of the new device were never conducted. That
is, neither the degree of nonreactivity nor the adequacy of the
containment of the silicone had been established prior to its
marketing. In fact, according to Tom Talcott, the scientist who
helped design the first envelopes, they were "never
designed to hold and retain silicone." The slow oozing of silicone gel
from breast prostheses manufactured in the early 1970s is evident to
any person who has held them in his hands; they are greasy to touch.
Yet the company has maintained that it could not have known that a
"bleed problem" existed in their product until after researchers
outside their laboratories tested them.

Keith Polmanteer, a Dow Corning's scientist, was granted a mammery
prostheses patent: Patent: #4,138,382, dated February, 1979, which
states:
"In the unlikely event of breakage of container 21 or in the event of
seepage of gel 22 through container 21 (e.g. by osmosis), the
infinitely swellable gel is observed to be absorbed and dissipated by
the body. The dissipation of the hydrophilic gel by the body
represents an improvement over previously known hydrophobic gels."
Polmanteer's patent also states: The funnel is about half filled with
alumina (obtained from Alcoa)....is then added along with 0.04g. of
Vazo 64 r (an azobis(isobutyronitrile) free radical catalyst to
initiate polymerization, available from DuPont.)
.

-from misc.health.alternative (usenet)
*note the newshosting and additives links on the side bar