There are 7,000 women who, this afternoon at 2 p.m., will have their eyes glued to the courthouse in Aix-en-Provence. All brought civil action in the case of defective breast prostheses. The Court of Appeal must, in fact, render its decision concerning Jean-Claude Mas, founder of the PIP company, which for years has put implants containing a dangerous gel into circulation.
The 76-year-old man was sentenced at first instance in 2013 to 4 years in prison for fraud, recalls the daily Ouest-France. A fine of 75,000 euros had also been requested by the Advocate General, as well as a ban on carrying out any activity in this area.
Since then, 18,000 women have had to have their prostheses removed, some of them having ruptured the pocket.
It must be said that this former grocer used a silicone gel made from industrial oil, underlines the daily. “The best in the world,” he pleaded at the bar, failing to mention that the raw material was non-compliant and untested and that the compositions varied from one batch to another.
True, the gel from the Mas company was seven times cheaper to produce than the others, but the prostheses cracked much more often.
It was in 2010 that health authorities discovered the scam. For many implanted women, it is a “ticking time bomb”, which is then activated in their body.
