Three women, each with their own roller coaster of pain complaints, fatigue, memory problems and worse. No longer able to work or see the children exercising on Saturday. Probably a burnout, a doctor said. Or early in transition, one of the women thought.
Now these three women are in court. And behind them in the room a few dozen women. They are all in Amsterdam this Tuesday for an even larger group demanding compensation because they had silicone breast implants of Allergan and became sick. The Stichting Bureau Clara Wichmann brought them together here for a mass claim of more than seven thousand women against the producer of these implants.
The women say that they chose these implants in the assumption that they were safe: the type of biocell from Allergan, with a rough exterior. But they got complaints, so the implants went out, new ones went in, everything at their own expense, and they again got pain, all kinds of systemic complaints – from nocturnal sweating to heart palpitations. An estimated sixty thousand other Dutch women received these implants.
Already in 1997 a case was known for a woman with these implants who received a rare form of lymph node cancer-abbreviated BIA-Alcl-which was associated with the implants. Then the knowledge about this context grew and the implants were removed from the market in 2018.
Liability for damage
Two of the three women in the front in court received cancer, BIA-Alcl. With all three things are much better after years in the medical mill, but they say, they say the scars. “From the inside and out.” And then there is the shame – that’s why they don’t want to say their name. “I thought: I made myself sick. I wanted to make myself more beautiful and I almost died of that.”
Then a female driver of Allergan, previously plastic surgeon, says: “We care about people, women and their health.” Every medical device has risks, and it is up to the plastic surgeon to weigh them with women against the benefits. “There are many women who have never regretted.”
The women still wear the scars, “inside and out”
What it is all about in this lawsuit is whether Allergan (for 55 billion euros taken over by ABBVIE in 2020) is liable for the damage that women with these implants suffered. Yes, the lawyers of the foundation argue. The women have not been informed about the risks of the poor prostheses, while they had been known to Allergan for years. In consumer language: they didn’t get the product they expected.
No, Alleran is not legally liable, allerghouses the lawyer argues with a barrage of arguments. It is up to the plastic surgeon to inform women about the risks. If you increase too many ‘uncertainties’ in the package leaflet for women, you feed unreal fears. The cause of BIA-Alcl is unknown, and the risk is extremely small. The company does not see a connection between complaints such as fatigue and implants.
The women have not been informed about the risks, the lawyer says, while they were known to Alleran
And defective? No, the implants met the safety requirements to get on the market. The fact that Allerman took them off the market was “as a precaution,” because of “the discussion,” not because they were not good. Of course, the complaints are real. But why should Allerman pay, for example for removing the implants, if the health insurer does not do that?
Collective
That Bureau Clara Wichmann has made a collective action of it is not the right way, according to Alleran. How can they demand compensation for all women, while many women have no complaints?
This makes the Alleran lawyer the core of the matter. Because Bureau Clara Wichmann seized the five -year -old Wet Settlement Masschade in Collective Action (WAMCA) very consciously: not only because women are stronger as collective than alone, opposite a pharmaceutical giant like Allergan. But also because of the social importance of a matter that, according to them, also about how companies make money over the back of women who feel pressure to meet a beauty ideal.
Whether women receive compensation and how much, that is not about today, the judge emphasizes at the beginning. This session is intended to be able to judge whether Allergan is liable. She expects the verdict on November 19.
The three women who speak here find each other in the breaks. They are happy that they could speak behind the claim for all women. But the fact that Allergan’s lawyers question that their complaints and even lymph node cancer has been caused by the implants is coming hard. “I was ashamed of it for a long time and thought it was up to me,” says one of them. “Now the risks are traced again.”
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