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Silicone Breast Implant Story.

Silicone Breast Implant Story. By Marsha L Vanderford and David H Smith. (Pp 218; $19.95.) Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996. ISBN0-8058-1707-7.

This book, subtitled ‘communication and uncertainty’, is a treatise on how information about silicone breast implants was conveyed to and obtained by the public. The topic of silicone implants remains a highly charged and controversial issue. Opinion in the medical community continues to be divided as to whether or not the implants cause disease. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this issue for rheumatologists concerns the medical and scientific arguments that can be constructed from both sides of the debate. Equally fascinating are the serpentine political and legal ramifications. The book under review, however, ignores these obvious angles and approaches the topic from a completely different perspective, which is interesting in its own right. The issue at hand is really how increasingly complex medical-scientific information gets presented to the public in general and, more specifically, to patients. The authors seem to contend that when it comes to the silicone implant issue, neither the implant manufacturers, the plastic surgeons nor the news media have adequately communicated …