~~~ For Quack Flack Coleah Penley Ayers .. this is all "imagined" ~~~


Confidence Game: Burson-Marsteller's PR Plan for Silicone Breast
Implants


by John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
Once reviled as corporate villains, the manufacturers of silicone
breast implants have made a stunning comeback recently in the court of
public opinion. A series of scientific studies and news stories have
emerged, arguing that breast implants are in fact harmless, and that
companies such as Dow Corning and Bristol-Myers are hapless victims of
misguided women, greedy attorneys and manipulated juries.

This turnaround is no accident. PR Watch has obtained internal
documents from Burson-Marsteller, the PR firm which engineered Dow
Corning's PR strategy in the early 1990s. These documents provide an
intriguing peek into a massive, expensive, and carefully orchestrated
campaign that integrates state-of-the-art grassroots PR with subtle
manipulations of science and the legal process.

The PR story begins in 1985, when Burson-Marsteller warned Dow Corning
of "the potential for a corporate media crisis" after a federal jury
in San Francisco ordered the company to pay $1.7 million to Maria
Stern in Carson City, Nevada for what the court judged were
"defectively designed and manufactured" breast implants. The jury
judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based on internal corporate memos
and studies showing that the company had failed to inform the public
of health risks related to implants.

Although the Stern case received slight media coverage,
Burson-Marsteller wrote an analysis titled "Silicone Medical Implants
as a Public Issue," in which the PR firm predicted that "the
combination of human suffering, large financial awards, big business
and big medicine . . . represent a potentially volatile media
situation for the company."

From Cover-up to Blow-up
After unsuccessful attempts to overturn the Stern verdict, Dow's
lawyers negotiated a settlement in which the company agreed to pay the
judgment in exchange for a "protective order" blocking public access
to embarrassing internal documents and testimony which had emerged
during the trial. In a series of subsequent cases filed by other
plaintiffs, Dow settled out of court, again obtaining secrecy orders
to keep damaging information from reaching the public.

In the late '80s, however, Dr. Sydney Wolfe, the head of Ralph Nader's
Public Citizen Health Research Group, became an outspoken critic of
implants. Women's groups also began pressuring the FDA to ban silicone
implants.

In December 1990, the story hit big on Connie Chung's Face to Face on
CBS-TV, which featured interviews with a series of seriously ill women
who blamed implants for their conditions. The show touched off a
frenzy among women with implants, and the FDA came under additional
public pressure. In March 1991, a New York City court awarded $4.5
million to a woman who claimed that implants had caused her cancer.

Juries judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based on internal corporate
memos documents showing that the company failed to inform the public
of health risks related to implants.

As the crisis grew, so did the company's PR campaign. In 1990,
Burson-Marsteller billed a paltry $6,000 in PR fees to Dow Corning,
but "From May 1991 through February 1992 our billings have been
$3,776,000, with gross income of $1,384,000," stated Burson-Marsteller
Senior Vice President Johnna Matthews, in a March 10, 1992 letter
marked "confidential" to Larry Snodden, President of B-M/Europe.

According to Matthews, Dow's PR crisis exploded when yet another
implant recipient, Marianne Hopkins, sued the company and the "jury
reached a verdict in December 1991. They found Dow Corning guilty of
fraud, oppression and malice with damages of $7.4 million. Damning
memos on issues of quality control and safety, which had been under
protective orders, reached the public and we've been playing catch-up
ever since. . . . Our job has become damage control of language that
compares breast implants to the 'Pinto gas tank' and a multitude of
other comments" in memos which are "almost impossible to defend in
court and certainly in the 'court of public opinion.' "

By 1992, the FDA had imposed a ban on further breast implants, and
implant manufacturers faced lawsuits worth billions of dollars. Dow
began to fear for its very survival, as breast implants threatened to
become a wedge opening the company to even wider scrutiny. "There are
other issues on the horizon for them," Matthews wrote. "All silicones
may be attacked, their other medical devices like joints are under
attack and they have some environmental issues too."

In a separate strategy document, Burson-Marsteller advised, "We must
aggressively fight a world in which 'silicone-free' becomes a labeling
boast."

Mobilizing the Masses
As the FDA moved toward hearings on the implant controversy, Dow and
the plastic surgeons launched a fierce PR counterattack.
Burson-Marsteller and its subsidiary, Gold & Liebengood, led the
charge for Dow, while the plastic surgeons retained the PR firms of
Kent & O'Connor, along with Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, another
B-M subsidiary.

One of Dow's internal memos from that period has been cited by critics
of the company as evidence that the company was engaged in deliberate
deception. Plaintiffs and their attorneys have emphasized a sentence
from the memo in which Dow CEO Dan Hayes states, "The issue of
cover-up is going well from a long-term perspective."

Less attention, however, has been given to the remainder of the Hayes
memo, in which he describes clearly the company's PR strategy. "The
number one issue in my mind is the establishment of networks," Hayes
states. "This is the largest single issue on our platter because it
affects not only the next 2--3 years of profitability . . . but also
ultimately has a big impact on the long-term ethics and believability
issues. . . . I have started to initiate surgeon contact . . . to
organize the plastic surgery community. . . . The place we have the
biggest hole still missing . . . is in this whole arena of getting the
patient grassroots movement going."



"These women (including celebrities)
will be trained and testimony will be written
or them to deliver before Congressional committees."
--internal Burson-Marsteller PR document





"Grassroots" has become a corporate buzzword for a PR strategy which
uses corporate wealth to subsidize orchestrated mass campaigns that
put seemingly independent citizens on the front lines as activists for
corporate causes. Phillip Morris, for example, has paid
Burson-Marsteller tens of millions of dollars to organize smokers into
the National Smokers' Alliance, which effectively lobbies for the
company in the name of "smokers' rights."

Johnna Matthews described B-M's grassroots strategy for Dow in a
confidential letter on September 9, 1991 addressed to B-M subsidiary
Gold & Liebengood. "I was not going to put this into writing, but
wanted you both to be up to speed--and there's too much information
for you to have to listen to it all verbally," Matthews wrote. "With
the FDA's new penchant for walking into ad agencies and demanding to
look at documents, I hope you'll give this a toss once you've read
it."

According to Matthews, "No one really knows why the women who have
problems have them. . . . It may be that there are women with an
allergic reaction to the silicone gel," although she termed this
"unlikely."

Worried that the FDA was considering a ban on silicone breast
implants, Matthews outlined a strategy for "getting women angry about
having the right to make their own decision about implants taken away
from them. . . . We also want to place regional, and if possible,
national media stories on the need for keeping this option open to
women."

Star Search
Another internal document describes Burson-Marsteller's grassroots
organizing tactics in more detail: "Utilize a well-known celebrity who
has breast implants for reconstructive purposes to speak out on the
benefits of them. Utilize spokespeople drawn from women's cancer
support groups in major markets to defend implants by writing letters
to the editor, participating in media interviews, and communicating
positive messages to women's groups in their regions."

Burson-Marsteller turned to the American Society of Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgeons for help in identifying patients who could be
recruited as spokespeople. After regional spokespersons had been
enrolled around the country, "we can announce the celebrity
chairperson as head of the national women's cancer support
organization (name to be determined). . . . [Dow Corning] makes
corporate grant to this organization. . . . Agency to provide
day-to-day media support for the group. . . . These women (including
celebrities) will be trained and testimony will be written for them to
deliver before Congressional committees."

In a preliminary budget, B-M suggested that Dow should be prepared to
pay $891,000 to get the grassroots program up and running, including a
$300,000 "participation fee" to its celebrity spokersperson.

In practice, it appears that Dow was never able to find an adequate
celebrity willing to fill the desired role. Only two celebrities have
gone public talking about their experiences with implants--talk show
host Jennie Jones and former "Waltons" actress Mary McDonough, both of
whom have spoken out against health problems which they believe were
caused by their implants.

Seeking Sympathy
B-M's focus groups showed that it could get the most favorable press
coverage by highlighting cases of women with breast cancer who have
had mastectomies and used implants for the purpose of breast
reconstruction. "While these are only 15-25% of implant patients--the
rest are augmentation--they engender more sympathy," Matthews wrote.

For similar reasons, Burson-Marsteller advised that cancer specialists
should be recruited as "spokesdoctors" to defend the company in the
top 15 media markets in the United States, because "an oncologist
obviously has more credibility than a plastic surgeon."

As Dow Corning geared up for hearings on implant safety scheduled for
November 14, 1991, Burson-Marsteller worked to organize a massive
"Washington fly-in." B-M staffer Cindee Castronovo was put in charge
of bringing up to 1,000 women to Washington to rally in favor of
implants, with Dow Corning footing the bills for their travel and
lodging, plus several days of rehearsals and training prior to the
actual testimony.

Participants in the fly-in included a writer named Karen Berger and
breast cancer support groups Y-ME, the Susan B. Komen Foundation, and
the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO). Y-ME was
given the assignment to generate 175,000 letters to Congress.

Berger, a former schoolteacher, was neither a cancer survivor nor an
implant recipient. Her authority as an expert on implants was based on
her authorship of A Woman's Decision: Breast Care, Treatment and
Reconstruction. Co-authored with plastic surgeon John Bostwick III,
the book encourages women to seek reconstructive surgery following
mastectomies. Burson-Marsteller pitched her to the press as the author
of "survey work" which "shows that the majority of breast cancer
patients who have been reconstructed find implants very valuable."

Berger's name appears repeatedly on internal Burson-Marsteller
documents, which describe her as a "primary recruiter" for the
Washington fly-in. In a USA Today profile, however, Berger is
described as an "independent medical publisher" who "says she has no
connection with any organization."

"The suggestion that women should martyr themselves . . . by remaining
breastless is a throwback to the Middle Ages," Berger argued in one
news release. She even went so far as to claim that banning implants
would lead to an increase in cancer deaths among women. Without the
implant option, she argued, women would avoid seeking diagnosis and
treatment of their cancers.

One Hand Washes Another
Burson-Marsteller documents suggest that financial incentives helped
Dow grease the skids with cancer support groups such as Y-ME and the
Susan B. Komen Foundation. The Komen Foundation, for example, sponsors
running marathons in several cities to fundraise and promote awareness
of the need for breast cancer checkups. In an October 1991 strategy
note, Burson-Marsteller noted that the foundation "wants Dow Corning
to sponsor upcoming race in Atlanta."

B-M also offered its assistance on what it called an "I scratch your
back" basis to the breast cancer coalition "to pump dollars for
[breast cancer] research."

Some breast cancer survivors, such as Darcy Sixt, publicly
acknowledged that they had become paid spokespersons for Dow Corning.
Others either worked for free or made no mention of who paid them.

Although the hundreds of women who rallied during the Washington
fly-in had their expenses paid, Burson-Marsteller planned to avoid
payments to people who would be testifying before the FDA. It made a
special exception to this rule in one case--Timmie Jean Lindsey, who
in 1962 became the first woman to receive a set of breast implants.
"We will be paying for Timmie Jean Lindsey to testify--based on the
fact that she could not take on the financial responsibility," states
a B-M document.

In fact, Lindsey's full story could strengthen the argument of women
who say implants cause connective-tissue disorders. In the 1970s, she
suffered joint pain, rashes, dry mouth, dry eyes, and chronic fatigue.
More recently, she underwent surgery to replace a knee joint, a
problem she attributes to age but which might be interpreted as a
symptom of silicone-induced arthritis. Her daughter and a
sister-in-law, both of whom she encouraged to receive implants, have
joined the class action lawsuit that plaintiffs have filed against
implant manufacturers, with her daughter alleging that the implants
gave her lupus.

The plastic surgeons' efforts to recruit spokespersons backfired
completely in the case of Terry Davis of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
"My doctor told me to lobby the FDA to keep implants," she told the
FDA panel. Instead, she attended so she could describe the
complications she had suffered with her implants following a double
mastectomy four years previously.

Bowing Out
In the March 1992 letter from B-M's Johnna Matthews to co-worker Larry
Snodden, she credited Burson-Marsteller's grassroots strategy with
"turning around the media coverage on the issue from strongly
negative, to almost equal amounts of balanced and positive articles
versus negative. It culminated briefly in November's FDA Advisory
Panel Hearings where by bringing in a tremendous number of women to
testify, we also helped turn those hearings around. The result was
that the panel recommended to FDA Commissioner David Kessler that the
implants remain on the market--a major victory."

Victory notwithstanding, Dow Corning was already outlining plans to
withdraw from the breast implant market, which had become both
controversial and unprofitable. In a strategy document dated December
19, 1991, Burson-Marsteller warned that "the company's motives are
going to be questioned. You can't say in November, 'We are very
concerned about the patients, and will do anything the FDA requires of
us to keep the product widely available,' and then say in January, 'We
are withdrawing from the marketplace.' "

From a PR perspective, B-M advised Dow that it could "minimize
negative comments" by timing its withdrawal to coincide with an
"adverse FDA decision" that could serve as "a highly defensible public
reason for withdrawing from the business."

The anticipated "adverse FDA decision" came with two rulings in early
1992. Although Kessler made an exemption so that breast cancer
patients could continue to receive silicone implants despite the ban,
Dow's grassroots network continues to accuse the FDA of limiting
options for breast reconstruction.

As recently as August 1995, Y-ME Executive Director Sharon Green
testified before Congress that "The implant debate is out of
control--and, as a result, we all lose." Another Y-ME activist,
Rosemary Locke, described silicone implants as "a benefit to women not
only in the breast cancer community, but to some degree to all women."

Cosmetic Reconstruction
In order to rehabilitate its battered image, Dow Corning reshuffled
management in 1992, bringing in Keith McKennon as its new chairman.
McKennon's background included crisis management for Dow Chemical
during the parent company's own prior scandals. The Washington Post
noted that McKennon had handled "public relations fights over dioxin
and Agent Orange. . . . This background is very pertinent to a
meaningful resolution of the mammary issue."

Dow also hired Griffin Bell, former U.S. Attorney General under
President Carter, to perform an "independent review" of the company.
Since leaving public office, Bell has performed similar high-profile
services for clients including Exxon in the wake of the Valdez oil
spill; General Motors after the discovery that pickup trucks were
exploding in auto collisions; Virginia Military Institute in its
effort to bar women students; and A.H. Robins during its Dalkon Shield
controversy.

"What does the company need from Griffin Bell?" asked one
Burson-Marsteller document. "Not a 'clean bill of health'--which would
be a disaster." B-M even suggested toughening the Bell review by
adding a "representative of a responsible public interest group" or a
"major medical association. If the findings are a bit rougher than
they might otherwise have been, from a PR perspective, that's not a
problem. It gives the company a chance to show credibility,
responsiveness, willingness to change."

Bell prepared a report based on his investigation, along with a
three-page letter of recommendations for changes in company policy.
Dow released the letter with an accompanying statement of the
company's intent to comply with these "reforms." The statement claimed
that Bell's team had exhaustively reviewed 300,000 pages of corporate
information. Citing attorney-client privilege, however, Dow refused to
release the documents for public review, or even to release Bell's
full report.

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[  Post Follow-up to this message ]

Humph...it's not me 'imaging this'...it's you, Ilena.
How did these diabolical demons know in 1991
that they would single you out years later.
You...not anyone else.  You alone..the Terrorizing Activist, singled out.
[Que in the song from the old 'Dragnet' show..]

Amazing...



"Ilena Rose" <ilena@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:51tmi010an5a7eli9frpbm1ba87tkjtiv7@4ax.com..
> ~~~ For Quack Flack Coleah Penley Ayers .. this is all "imagined" ~~~
>
>
> Confidence Game: Burson-Marsteller's PR Plan for Silicone Breast
> Implants
>
>
> by John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
> Once reviled as corporate villains, the manufacturers of silicone
> breast implants have made a stunning comeback recently in the court of
> public opinion. A series of scientific studies and news stories have
> emerged, arguing that breast implants are in fact harmless, and that
> companies such as Dow Corning and Bristol-Myers are hapless victims of
> misguided women, greedy attorneys and manipulated juries.
>
> This turnaround is no accident. PR Watch has obtained internal
> documents from Burson-Marsteller, the PR firm which engineered Dow
> Corning's PR strategy in the early 1990s. These documents provide an
> intriguing peek into a massive, expensive, and carefully orchestrated
> campaign that integrates state-of-the-art grassroots PR with subtle
> manipulations of science and the legal process.
>
> The PR story begins in 1985, when Burson-Marsteller warned Dow Corning
> of "the potential for a corporate media crisis" after a federal jury
> in San Francisco ordered the company to pay $1.7 million to Maria
> Stern in Carson City, Nevada for what the court judged were
> "defectively designed and manufactured" breast implants. The jury
> judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based on internal corporate memos
> and studies showing that the company had failed to inform the public
> of health risks related to implants.
>
> Although the Stern case received slight media coverage,
> Burson-Marsteller wrote an analysis titled "Silicone Medical Implants
> as a Public Issue," in which the PR firm predicted that "the
> combination of human suffering, large financial awards, big business
> and big medicine . . . represent a potentially volatile media
> situation for the company."
>
> From Cover-up to Blow-up
> After unsuccessful attempts to overturn the Stern verdict, Dow's
> lawyers negotiated a settlement in which the company agreed to pay the
> judgment in exchange for a "protective order" blocking public access
> to embarrassing internal documents and testimony which had emerged
> during the trial. In a series of subsequent cases filed by other
> plaintiffs, Dow settled out of court, again obtaining secrecy orders
> to keep damaging information from reaching the public.
>
> In the late '80s, however, Dr. Sydney Wolfe, the head of Ralph Nader's
> Public Citizen Health Research Group, became an outspoken critic of
> implants. Women's groups also began pressuring the FDA to ban silicone
> implants.
>
> In December 1990, the story hit big on Connie Chung's Face to Face on
> CBS-TV, which featured interviews with a series of seriously ill women
> who blamed implants for their conditions. The show touched off a
> frenzy among women with implants, and the FDA came under additional
> public pressure. In March 1991, a New York City court awarded $4.5
> million to a woman who claimed that implants had caused her cancer.
>
> Juries judged Dow Corning guilty of fraud, based on internal corporate
> memos documents showing that the company failed to inform the public
> of health risks related to implants.
>
> As the crisis grew, so did the company's PR campaign. In 1990,
> Burson-Marsteller billed a paltry $6,000 in PR fees to Dow Corning,
> but "From May 1991 through February 1992 our billings have been
> $3,776,000, with gross income of $1,384,000," stated Burson-Marsteller
> Senior Vice President Johnna Matthews, in a March 10, 1992 letter
> marked "confidential" to Larry Snodden, President of B-M/Europe.
>
> According to Matthews, Dow's PR crisis exploded when yet another
> implant recipient, Marianne Hopkins, sued the company and the "jury
> reached a verdict in December 1991. They found Dow Corning guilty of
> fraud, oppression and malice with damages of $7.4 million. Damning
> memos on issues of quality control and safety, which had been under
> protective orders, reached the public and we've been playing catch-up
> ever since. . . . Our job has become damage control of language that
> compares breast implants to the 'Pinto gas tank' and a multitude of
> other comments" in memos which are "almost impossible to defend in
> court and certainly in the 'court of public opinion.' "
>
> By 1992, the FDA had imposed a ban on further breast implants, and
> implant manufacturers faced lawsuits worth billions of dollars. Dow
> began to fear for its very survival, as breast implants threatened to
> become a wedge opening the company to even wider scrutiny. "There are
> other issues on the horizon for them," Matthews wrote. "All silicones
> may be attacked, their other medical devices like joints are under
> attack and they have some environmental issues too."
>
> In a separate strategy document, Burson-Marsteller advised, "We must
> aggressively fight a world in which 'silicone-free' becomes a labeling
> boast."
>
> Mobilizing the Masses
> As the FDA moved toward hearings on the implant controversy, Dow and
> the plastic surgeons launched a fierce PR counterattack.
> Burson-Marsteller and its subsidiary, Gold & Liebengood, led the
> charge for Dow, while the plastic surgeons retained the PR firms of
> Kent & O'Connor, along with Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, another
> B-M subsidiary.
>
> One of Dow's internal memos from that period has been cited by critics
> of the company as evidence that the company was engaged in deliberate
> deception. Plaintiffs and their attorneys have emphasized a sentence
> from the memo in which Dow CEO Dan Hayes states, "The issue of
> cover-up is going well from a long-term perspective."
>
> Less attention, however, has been given to the remainder of the Hayes
> memo, in which he describes clearly the company's PR strategy. "The
> number one issue in my mind is the establishment of networks," Hayes
> states. "This is the largest single issue on our platter because it
> affects not only the next 2--3 years of profitability . . . but also
> ultimately has a big impact on the long-term ethics and believability
> issues. . . . I have started to initiate surgeon contact . . . to
> organize the plastic surgery community. . . . The place we have the
> biggest hole still missing . . . is in this whole arena of getting the
> patient grassroots movement going."
>
>
>
> "These women (including celebrities)
> will be trained and testimony will be written
> or them to deliver before Congressional committees."
> --internal Burson-Marsteller PR document
>
>
>
>
>
> "Grassroots" has become a corporate buzzword for a PR strategy which
> uses corporate wealth to subsidize orchestrated mass campaigns that
> put seemingly independent citizens on the front lines as activists for
> corporate causes. Phillip Morris, for example, has paid
> Burson-Marsteller tens of millions of dollars to organize smokers into
> the National Smokers' Alliance, which effectively lobbies for the
> company in the name of "smokers' rights."
>
> Johnna Matthews described B-M's grassroots strategy for Dow in a
> confidential letter on September 9, 1991 addressed to B-M subsidiary
> Gold & Liebengood. "I was not going to put this into writing, but
> wanted you both to be up to speed--and there's too much information
> for you to have to listen to it all verbally," Matthews wrote. "With
> the FDA's new penchant for walking into ad agencies and demanding to
> look at documents, I hope you'll give this a toss once you've read
> it."
>
> According to Matthews, "No one really knows why the women who have
> problems have them. . . . It may be that there are women with an
> allergic reaction to the silicone gel," although she termed this
> "unlikely."
>
> Worried that the FDA was considering a ban on silicone breast
> implants, Matthews outlined a strategy for "getting women angry about
> having the right to make their own decision about implants taken away
> from them. . . . We also want to place regional, and if possible,
> national media stories on the need for keeping this option open to
> women."
>
> Star Search
> Another internal document describes Burson-Marsteller's grassroots
> organizing tactics in more detail: "Utilize a well-known celebrity who
> has breast implants for reconstructive purposes to speak out on the
> benefits of them. Utilize spokespeople drawn from women's cancer
> support groups in major markets to defend implants by writing letters
> to the editor, participating in media interviews, and communicating
> positive messages to women's groups in their regions."
>
> Burson-Marsteller turned to the American Society of Plastic and
> Reconstructive Surgeons for help in identifying patients who could be
> recruited as spokespeople. After regional spokespersons had been
> enrolled around the country, "we can announce the celebrity
> chairperson as head of the national women's cancer support
> organization (name to be determined). . . . [Dow Corning] makes
> corporate grant to this organization. . . . Agency to provide
> day-to-day media support for the group. . . . These women (including
> celebrities) will be trained and testimony will be written for them to
> deliver before Congressional committees."
>
> In a preliminary budget, B-M suggested that Dow should be prepared to
> pay $891,000 to get the grassroots program up and running, including a
> $300,000 "participation fee" to its celebrity spokersperson.
>
> In practice, it appears that Dow was never able to find an adequate
> celebrity willing to fill the desired role. Only two celebrities have
> gone public talking about their experiences with implants--talk show
> host Jennie Jones and former "Waltons" actress Mary McDonough, both of
> whom have spoken out against health problems which they believe were
> caused by their implants.
>
> Seeking Sympathy
> B-M's focus groups showed that it could get the most favorable press
> coverage by highlighting cases of women with breast cancer who have
> had mastectomies and used implants for the purpose of breast
> reconstruction. "While these are only 15-25% of implant patients--the
> rest are augmentation--they engender more sympathy," Matthews wrote.
>
> For similar reasons, Burson-Marsteller advised that cancer specialists
> should be recruited as "spokesdoctors" to defend the company in the
> top 15 media markets in the United States, because "an oncologist
> obviously has more credibility than a plastic surgeon."
>
> As Dow Corning geared up for hearings on implant safety scheduled for
> November 14, 1991, Burson-Marsteller worked to organize a massive
> "Washington fly-in." B-M staffer Cindee Castronovo was put in charge
> of bringing up to 1,000 women to Washington to rally in favor of
> implants, with Dow Corning footing the bills for their travel and
> lodging, plus several days of rehearsals and training prior to the
> actual testimony.
>
> Participants in the fly-in included a writer named Karen Berger and
> breast cancer support groups Y-ME, the Susan B. Komen Foundation, and
> the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO). Y-ME was
> given the assignment to generate 175,000 letters to Congress.
>
> Berger, a former schoolteacher, was neither a cancer survivor nor an
> implant recipient. Her authority as an expert on implants was based on
> her authorship of A Woman's Decision: Breast Care, Treatment and
> Reconstruction. Co-authored with plastic surgeon John Bostwick III,
> the book encourages women to seek reconstructive surgery following
> mastectomies. Burson-Marsteller pitched her to the press as the author
> of "survey work" which "shows that the majority of breast cancer
> patients who have been reconstructed find implants very valuable."
>
> Berger's name appears repeatedly on internal Burson-Marsteller
> documents, which describe her as a "primary recruiter" for the
> Washington fly-in. In a USA Today profile, however, Berger is
> described as an "independent medical publisher" who "says she has no
> connection with any organization."
>
> "The suggestion that women should martyr themselves . . . by remaining
> breastless is a throwback to the Middle Ages," Berger argued in one
> news release. She even went so far as to claim that banning implants
> would lead to an increase in cancer deaths among women. Without the
> implant option, she argued, women would avoid seeking diagnosis and
> treatment of their cancers.
>
> One Hand Washes Another
> Burson-Marsteller documents suggest that financial incentives helped
> Dow grease the skids with cancer support groups such as Y-ME and the
> Susan B. Komen Foundation. The Komen Foundation, for example, sponsors
> running marathons in several cities to fundraise and promote awareness
> of the need for breast cancer checkups. In an October 1991 strategy
> note, Burson-Marsteller noted that the foundation "wants Dow Corning
> to sponsor upcoming race in Atlanta."
>
> B-M also offered its assistance on what it called an "I scratch your
> back" basis to the breast cancer coalition "to pump dollars for
> [breast cancer] research."
>
> Some breast cancer survivors, such as Darcy Sixt, publicly
> acknowledged that they had become paid spokespersons for Dow Corning.
> Others either worked for free or made no mention of who paid them.
>
> Although the hundreds of women who rallied during the Washington
> fly-in had their expenses paid, Burson-Marsteller planned to avoid
> payments to people who would be testifying before the FDA. It made a
> special exception to this rule in one case--Timmie Jean Lindsey, who
> in 1962 became the first woman to receive a set of breast implants.
> "We will be paying for Timmie Jean Lindsey to testify--based on the
> fact that she could not take on the financial responsibility," states
> a B-M document.
>
> In fact, Lindsey's full story could strengthen the argument of women
> who say implants cause connective-tissue disorders. In the 1970s, she
> suffered joint pain, rashes, dry mouth, dry eyes, and chronic fatigue.
> More recently, she underwent surgery to replace a knee joint, a
> problem she attributes to age but which might be interpreted as a
> symptom of silicone-induced arthritis. Her daughter and a
> sister-in-law, both of whom she encouraged to receive implants, have
> joined the class action lawsuit that plaintiffs have filed against
> implant manufacturers, with her daughter alleging that the implants
> gave her lupus.
>
> The plastic surgeons' efforts to recruit spokespersons backfired
> completely in the case of Terry Davis of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
> "My doctor told me to lobby the FDA to keep implants," she told the
> FDA panel. Instead, she attended so she could describe the
> complications she had suffered with her implants following a double
> mastectomy four years previously.
>
> Bowing Out
> In the March 1992 letter from B-M's Johnna Matthews to co-worker Larry
> Snodden, she credited Burson-Marsteller's grassroots strategy with
> "turning around the media coverage on the issue from strongly
> negative, to almost equal amounts of balanced and positive articles
> versus negative. It culminated briefly in November's FDA Advisory
> Panel Hearings where by bringing in a tremendous number of women to
> testify, we also helped turn those hearings around. The result was
> that the panel recommended to FDA Commissioner David Kessler that the
> implants remain on the market--a major victory."
>
> Victory notwithstanding, Dow Corning was already outlining plans to
> withdraw from the breast implant market, which had become both
> controversial and unprofitable. In a strategy document dated December
> 19, 1991, Burson-Marsteller warned that "the company's motives are
> going to be questioned. You can't say in November, 'We are very
> concerned about the patients, and will do anything the FDA requires of
> us to keep the product widely available,' and then say in January, 'We
> are withdrawing from the marketplace.' "
>
> From a PR perspective, B-M advised Dow that it could "minimize
> negative comments" by timing its withdrawal to coincide with an
> "adverse FDA decision" that could serve as "a highly defensible public
> reason for withdrawing from the business."
>
> The anticipated "adverse FDA decision" came with two rulings in early
> 1992. Although Kessler made an exemption so that breast cancer
> patients could continue to receive silicone implants despite the ban,
> Dow's grassroots network continues to accuse the FDA of limiting
> options for breast reconstruction.
>
> As recently as August 1995, Y-ME Executive Director Sharon Green
> testified before Congress that "The implant debate is out of
> control--and, as a result, we all lose." Another Y-ME activist,
> Rosemary Locke, described silicone implants as "a benefit to women not
> only in the breast cancer community, but to some degree to all women."
>
> Cosmetic Reconstruction
> In order to rehabilitate its battered image, Dow Corning reshuffled
> management in 1992, bringing in Keith McKennon as its new chairman.
> McKennon's background included crisis management for Dow Chemical
> during the parent company's own prior scandals. The Washington Post
> noted that McKennon had handled "public relations fights over dioxin
> and Agent Orange. . . . This background is very pertinent to a
> meaningful resolution of the mammary issue."
>
> Dow also hired Griffin Bell, former U.S. Attorney General under
> President Carter, to perform an "independent review" of the company.
> Since leaving public office, Bell has performed similar high-profile
> services for clients including Exxon in the wake of the Valdez oil
> spill; General Motors after the discovery that pickup trucks were
> exploding in auto collisions; Virginia Military Institute in its
> effort to bar women students; and A.H. Robins during its Dalkon Shield
> controversy.
>
> "What does the company need from Griffin Bell?" asked one
> Burson-Marsteller document. "Not a 'clean bill of health'--which would
> be a disaster." B-M even suggested toughening the Bell review by
> adding a "representative of a responsible public interest group" or a
> "major medical association. If the findings are a bit rougher than
> they might otherwise have been, from a PR perspective, that's not a
> problem. It gives the company a chance to show credibility,
> responsiveness, willingness to change."
>
> Bell prepared a report based on his investigation, along with a
> three-page letter of recommendations for changes in company policy.
> Dow released the letter with an accompanying statement of the
> company's intent to comply with these "reforms." The statement claimed
> that Bell's team had exhaustively reviewed 300,000 pages of corporate
> information. Citing attorney-client privilege, however, Dow refused to
> release the documents for public review, or even to release Bell's
> full report.
>
>

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On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:22:11 -0700, "Coleah" <coleah@pacifier.com>
wrote:

>Humph...it's not me 'imaging this'...it's you, Ilena.
>How did these diabolical demons know in 1991
>that they would single you out years later.


They didn't, Ditz.

I'm not the only real Support Leader the manufacturers have gone after
.. Myrl and Snoops and Martha have waged war against many ..

I'm just the one who refuses to be intimidated by "The Media" Quack
Steve Barrett and the Junk Science Propagandists like Milloy and your
buddy, Corporate Lobbyist and PR Flack, Andrew M Langer.

www.humanticsfoundation.com/andysposse.htm

K

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"Ilena Rose" <ilena@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:ef5ni0l6fs23722i49ga5sog950t1h17ao@4ax.com..
> On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:22:11 -0700, "Coleah" <coleah@pacifier.com>
> wrote:
> 
>
>
> They didn't, Ditz.
>
> I'm not the only real Support Leader the manufacturers have gone after
> .. Myrl and Snoops and Martha have waged war against many ..
>
> I'm just the one who refuses to be intimidated by "The Media" Quack
> Steve Barrett and the Junk Science Propagandists like Milloy and your
> buddy, Corporate Lobbyist and PR Flack, Andrew M Langer.

Brother!
Like these guys walk, talk and breathe negative things about implants.
Face it Ilena, you have your very own personal war going on
with this guys that YOU have created, and it's gone way
beyond having the slightest thing to do with breast implants.

Your phoney 'heroine for the implant survivors' act isn't cutting it.

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On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:22:11 -0700, "Coleah" <coleah@pacifier.com>
wrote:

>Humph...it's not me 'imaging this'...it's you, Ilena.
>How did these diabolical demons know in 1991
>that they would single you out years later.


They didn't, Ditz.

I'm not the only real Support Leader the manufacturers have gone after
.. Myrl and Snoops and Martha have waged war against many ..

I'm just the one who refuses to be intimidated by "The Media" Quack
Steve Barrett and the Junk Science Propagandists like Milloy and your
buddy, Corporate Lobbyist and PR Flack, Andrew M Langer.

www.humanticsfoundation.com/andysposse.htm

K

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