Breasts (29 page)

woman said to have the largest implants in the world:
Fox News reported that the Houston woman, Sheyla Hershey, suffered a serious staph infection after her latest implant surgery. It was her thirtieth operation, according to “Woman with World’s Largest Breasts Fighting for Her Life,” July 14, 2010, available at
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/07/14/woman-worlds-largest-breasts-fighting-life/#ixzz1DmS8FrTD
.

“What goes up must go down”:
Patrick McCain, “World’s Largest Breasts, 38KKK Sheyla Hershey Breast Implants Removed,”
Rightpundits.com
, September 14, 2010 (originally published in 2009), at
http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=2822
.

Over the course of a menstrual cycle:
Z. Hussain et al., “Estimation of Breast Volume and Its Variation during the Menstrual Cycle Using MRI and Stereology,”
British Journal of Radiology,
vol. 72, no. 855 (1999), pp. 236-245.

“Brassiere design is one engineering activity”:
Quote and equation from Edward Nanas, “Brassieres: An Engineering Miracle,”
Science and Mechanics,
February 1964, available at
http://www.firstpr.com.au/show-and-tell/corsetry-1/nanas/engineer.html
(accessed October 2011). Nanas backed up his statement with a description from Mrs. Ida Rosenthal, the seventy-seven-year-old head of Maidenform. “She recently returned from a tour of the Soviet garment industry and found that bra designers on the other side of the Iron Curtain have not yet discovered stretch fabrics, foam padding, hooks and eyes, or the strapless bra.”

She showed me the action footage:
To see Werb’s film clips, check out
http://anatomy.ucsf.edu/Werbwebsite/egebald%20movies%202008/Movie_1.mov
.

a digression:
On the cadaver trade, see Julie Bess Frank, “Body Snatching: A Grave Medical Problem,”
Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine,
vol. 49 (1976), pp. 399-410; and W. B. Walker, “Medical Education in 19th Century Great Britain,”
Journal of Medical Education,
vol. 31, no. 11 (1956), pp. 765-777.

“a breadth of experience unparalleled before or since”:
James Going, clinical senior lecturer in pathology, University of Glasgow, author interview, May 2010.

“galactograms”:
Cooper,
On the Anatomy of the Breast;
for a digital version, see
http://jdc.jefferson.edu/cooper/61/
.

on rare occasion have been able to produce milk-like fluid:
For more on male lactation, see Jared Diamond, who lays out a plausible male breast-feeding scenario in “Father’s Milk,”
Discover,
vol. 16, no. 2 (February 1995), pp. 82-87. This essay perhaps inspired a Swedish college student named Ragnar “Milkman” Bengtsson, who, in 2009, tried to stimulate milk production by pumping his nipples every three hours for two months. It didn’t work. See “Swedish ‘Milkman’ Loses Breastfeeding Battle,”
The Local,
December 1, 2009, at
http://www.thelocal.se/23592/20091201/
. The anthropologist Barry Hewlett documented suckling among men of the Aka Pygmy tribe in central Africa, but they appeared to be providing “comfort suckling” and not nutrition. See Joanna Moorhead, “Are the Men of the African Aka Tribe the Best Fathers in the World?”
The Guardian,
July 15, 2005.

“the breasts are generally two in number:”
Cooper,
On the Anatomy of the Breast,
p.
13.

“…
but on the fourth night”:
Maria Edgeworth,
Tales and Novels: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond
(London: George Routledge and Sons, 1893), p. 394.

cosmetic surgery:
Statistics are from the American Society for Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery, “Statistics,” Press Center, at
http://www.surgery.org/media/statistics
(accessed October 2011).

performs more augmentations by far than any doctor in Texas:
Becca Quisenberry, Patient Coordinator, Ciaravino Plastic Surgery, author interview, September 2011.

Falsies, made out of wire, sheet metal, papier-mâché:
See Teresa Riordan, “We Must Increase Our Bust: A History of Breast Enhancement, Told in Patent Drawings,”
Slate,
April 11, 2005, at
http://www.slate.com/id/2116481
; and Elizabeth Haiken,
Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 243-246.

Consider the case of poor Elisabeth Trevers:
Gordon Letterman and Maxine Schurter, “Will Durston’s Mammaplasty,”
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,
vol. 53, no. 1 (1974), quoted in Nora Jacobsen,
Cleavage: Technology, Controversy, and the Ironies of the Man-Made Breast
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000),
p.
50.

Vincenz Czerny:
The first boob job was technically a reconstruction. See Theodore W. Uroskie Jr. and Lawrence B. Colen, “History of Breast Reconstruction,”
Seminars in Plastic Surgery,
vol. 18, no. 2 (May 2004), pp. 65-69.

glass balls, ivory, wood chips:
For information on the early-twentiethcentury implant materials used, see Haiken,
Venus Envy;
also Bernard M. Patten, former chief of neuromuscular disease, Baylor College of Medicine, author interview, February 2011.

disadvantages of paraffin:
Jacobsen,
Cleavage,
pp. 52-54.

Women have painted their faces:
Julie M. Spanbauer, “Breast Implants as Beauty Ritual: Woman’s Sceptre and Prison,”
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism,
vol. 9, no. 157 (1997).

Ivalon:
S. Murthy Tadavarthy, James H. Moller, and Kurt Amplatz, “Polyvinylalcohol (Ivalon)—A New Embolic Material,”
American Journal of Roentgenology,
vol. 125, no. 3 (November 1975), pp. 609-616.

“The material’s one drawback”:
Plastic surgeon Milton Edgerton, paraphrased in
Jet Magazine,
December 12, 1957, available at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vieilles_annonces/3778246964/
(accessed October 2011).

Dow Corning:
For the history of Dow Corning, see Haiken,
Venus Envy,
pp. 246-247. Also see this colorful document from the Dow website:
www.dowcorning.com/content/publishedlit/01-4027-01.pdf
(accessed October 2011).

the breasts of Japanese prostitutes, who were being injected with it:
M. Sharon Webb, “Cleopatra’s Needle: The History and Legacy of Silicone Injections,” Harvard Law School paper, January 1997, available at
http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/197/mwebb.pdf
; and Haiken,
Venus Envy,
p. 246.

Back in Houston, plastic surgeon Thomas Cronin:
As recounted by Thomas Biggs, retired plastic surgeon, Houston, Texas, author interview, January 2011. Biggs also recounted the story of Cronin’s ambition and the first surgery, including parts about Esmerelda. He was a resident of Cronin’s at the time.

On the back of the bag, they added several patches of Dacron:
Jacobsen,
Cleavage,
pp. 78-79.

Some authors say they tested it in six dogs:
John Byrne,
Informed Consent
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), pp. 47-50.

Surgery to remove implants, known as explantation:
For a discussion of what’s found at the explant site, see R. Vaamonde et al., “Silicone Granulomatous Lymphadenopathy and Siliconomas of the Breast,”
Histology and Histopathology,
vol. 4 (October 1997), pp. 1003-1011.

“Many women with limited development of the breast”:
Gerow, quoted in Jacobsen,
Cleavage,
pp. 78-79.

One surgeon’s autobiography:
Robert Alan Franklyn,
Beauty Surgeon
(Long Beach, Calif.: Whitehorn, 1960).

“there is a substantial and enlarging body”:
The American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery’s statement to the Food and Drug Administration, in 1982, is a well-known quote. I love the not-quite-subliminal use of the word
enlarging.
See the quote referenced with biting commentary from Barbara Ehrenreich, “Stamping Out a Dread Scourge,”
Time,
February 17, 1992, available at
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974902,00.html
.

The largest was called “the Burlesque”:
Jacobsen,
Cleavage,
p. 79.

Gerow reputedly liked big breasts:
Bernard Patten, author interview, January 2011.

One Houston doctor boasted:
For an excellent article on Houston in its boob-job glory days, see Mimi Swartz, “Silicone City,”
Texas Monthly,
vol. 23, no. 8 (1995), pp. 64-78.

By 1985, one hundred thousand women:
Newsweek
noted in 1985 that nearly one hundred thousand breast augmentations had been performed over the past year “for a total addition to the nation’s mammary capacity of some 13,000 gallons (of silicone gel),” as quoted in Haiken,
Venus Envy,
p. 273.

Carol Doda:
For more on Doda, there’s a great section on her breasts (and the infamous piano) in Mike Sinclair’s
San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History
(Oxford: Signal Books, 2004), pp. 84-85.

“Carol Doda’s breasts are up there”:
Thomas Wolfe,
The Pump House Gang
(New York: Bantam, 1969), p. 67.

strippers instantly saw their tips increase:
Bernard Patten, author interview, January 2011.

Houston became the strip-club capital of the world:
Michael Ciaravino, author interview, January 2011.

Rick’s Cabaret:
For more on the history of Rick’s Cabaret, see Swartz, “Silicone City.”

restricted the use of the “medical-grade” stuff:
On the FDA restrictions on the “medical-grade” stuff and reports of infection, gangrene, and so on, see Haiken,
Venus Envy,
pp. 274-275.

Many patients—41 percent, according to a 1979 study:
G.
P.
Hetter, “Satisfactions and Dissatisfactions in Patients with Augmentation Mammaplasty,”
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,
vol. 64, no. 2 (August 1979), p. 151.

An enormous percentage of patients—around 25 to 70 percent:
Neal Handel et al., “A Long-Term Study of Outcomes, Complications, and Patient Satisfaction with Breast Implants,”
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,
vol. 117, no. 3 (March 2006), pp. 757-767.

“They were like doorbells”:
Bernard Patten, author interview, January 2011.

Early dissections of the affected tissue:
Thomas Biggs, author interview, January 2011.

The operation itself:
Michael Ciaravino, author interview, January 2011.

Company salesmen were told to wash the leaking implants:
This comes from an internal Dow Corning memo dated January 15, 1975, that was made public when the group Public Citizen sued the FDA; cited in Jack Doyle,
Trespass against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), p. 257.

causing a prolonged inflammatory response and “microencapsulations”:
See Michelle Copeland et al., “Absent Silicone Shell in a MEME Polyurethane Silicone Breast Implant: Report of a Case and Review of the Literature,”
Breast Journal,
vol. 2, no. 5 (September 1996), pp. 340-344.

manufacturer of the foam was apparently surprised:
See Nicholas Regush, “Toxic Breasts,”
Ms. Magazine,
vol. 17, no. 1 (January/February 1992), pp. 24-31.

Many surgeons remember these implants fondly:
Thomas Biggs, author interview, January 2011.

76
foam-covered implants continue to be used:
Handel et al., “Long-Term Study of Outcomes.”

“we know more about the life span of automobile tires”:
David Kessler, quoted in Spanbauer, “Breast Implants as Beauty Ritual.”

Dow Corning declared bankruptcy:
On Dow Corning’s bankruptcy history, see Dow Corning’s publication “Highlights from the History of Dow Corning Corporation, the Silicone Pioneer,” available at
www.dowcorning.com/content/publishedlit/01-4027-01.pdf
(accessed October 10, 2011); and John Schwartz, “Dow Corning Accepts Implant Settlement Plan; $3.2 Billion Earmarked for Health Claims,”
Washington Post,
July 9, 1998.

anaplastic large-cell lymphoma:
Denise Grady, “Breast Implants Are Linked to Rare but Treatable Cancer, F.D.A. Finds,”
New York Times,
January 26, 2011.

“The message that never reaches the public”:
Spanbauer, “Breast Implants as Beauty Ritual.”

from a high of 150,000:
Marcia Angell, “Breast Implants— Protection or Paternalism?”
New England Journal of Medicine,
vol. 326 (June 18, 1992), pp. 1695-1696.

the FDA approved:
On FDA approvals, see “Breast Implants,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, at
http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/Implantsand Prosthetics/BreastImplants/default.htm
(accessed October 14, 2011).

roughly $820 million a year:
Denise Grady, “Dispute over Cancer Tied to Implants,”
New York Times,
February 17, 2011.

Between five and ten million women:
Grady, “Dispute over Cancer Tied to Implants.”

product insert data sheet:
For Mentor’s product insert data sheet, see
http://www.mentorwwllc.com/global-us/SafetyInformation.aspx
(accessed October 2011).

a major review of the literature from the Institute of Medicine:
Safety of Silicone Breast Implants
(Washington, D.C.: Institute of Medicine National Academy Press, 2000). Also available through the Institute of Medicine website, at
www.iom.edu
.

“It is not known if a small amount of silicone”:
For information on the effects on nursing infants, see “FDA Breast Implant Consumer Handbook—2004,” at
www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/ImplantsandProsthetics/BreastImplants/ucm064242.htm
.

“Fortunately, patients undergoing plastic surgery of the breast”:
Eugene H. Courtiss and Robert M. Goldwyn, “Breast Sensation before and after Plastic Surgery,”
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,
vol. 58, no. 1 (July 1976), pp. 1-13, quoted in Haiken,
Venus Envy,
p. 270.