Dying Plastic People
How Breast Implants Have Increased Reports of Chronic Illness, Cancer, and Death in Women Despite Warnings by the FDA and WHO
By Kaci Baez
*This article contains content that might be triggering.
I recently spoke to Janice* about her shocking experience in a low-rated eating rehabilitation center in her early twenties and the generational toxic feminism, early trauma, and misdiagnosis that she experienced as part of a long and grueling medical nightmare.
Janice is not alone in her struggles with being chronically ill as a result of damaging influences and outlandish sociocultural body ideals fueled by reckless marketing and false beliefs.
As part of my research and book on chronic illness and toxic beauty, I interviewed Jolene* about her never-before-shared plastic surgery nightmare that led to more than 15 years of chronic debilitating illness.
She describes: “For graduation, my mother ‘gifted’ me pre-paid breast augmentation surgery that I did not ask for. She had thought it was in my own best interest to undergo a potentially deadly surgery to mold myself into a more feminine physical form so that I would be more successful in life, although I was a straight-A student.”
Medical experts say that people who push their children or significant others to have cosmetic plastic surgery raise serious, ethical, psychological, and developmental concerns within the medical community. And thousands have reported sickness from breast implants.
Recent scientific data published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that bacterial biofilms on breast implants can create a toxic inflammatory response by producing an immune-activating molecule called oxylipin 10-HOM.
Jolene said that she was on her mom’s insurance at the time and felt she was not financially or mentally independent enough to decline such a “gift” and literally did not know that saying no was an option, although she said that her ex-boyfriend at the time “wisely” advised her against it. Her brain was not yet developed, because our brains are not fully formed until we are 25-30 years old or older; irrational decisions are simply easier to make when you are young, vulnerable, and surrounded by people who only care about surface-level looks over literally anything else.
Fueled by the rise in crowdsourced wellness, today’s generation may be more self-informed about boundaries than we all were many years ago. Nonetheless, it has been scientifically proven that the frontal lobe of the brain, which controls decision-making, impulsiveness, and understanding consequences, does not fully develop until the 20s, and very often, the 30s, which is often why we can make “questionable” choices until then.
In a research study, neuropsychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, PhD, and colleagues at the McLean Hospital Brain Imaging Center in Boston used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the activity of teenage brains to those of adults. According to an article on the research, “The results from the McLean study suggest that while adults can use rational decision-making processes when facing emotional decisions, adolescent brains are simply not yet equipped to think through things in the same way.”
Jolene told me that “immediately” after undergoing this "unnecessary and regrettable graduation present,” her physical and mental health declined and stayed that way for more than 10 years. “My body image did not improve; it worsened. I instantly became depressed, anxious, inflamed, bloated, fatigued, and generally unwell, and stayed that way until I finally forced myself to get the implants out after reading countless reports on the breast implant illness forums.” Adding: “My breasts came out even larger than I was told they would be, and I could not fit into clothes correctly. My kids could not breastfeed and were very sick. I was very, very sick. Despite having a pretty healthy lifestyle, I developed unexplained autoimmune disease, horrendous anxiety and crushing fatigue, and felt like a dying and resentful alien in my own body until well after I got them removed.”
The crippling anxiety, Jolene says, did largely go away after she fully recovered from the surgery, and she says her health has improved dramatically, which she also attributes to “not drinking alcohol or eating junk food and having a very active lifestyle.” Adding: “Having an en bloc total capsulectomy explant surgery and speaking up for myself was extremely challenging, but it was the only way to improve my unexplained deteriorating physical and mental health and frequent breast cancer scares.” Jolene said that she did not have a lot of money for the surgery, but “did not want to take any shortcuts that could make things worse,” and found a top-rated surgeon knowledgeable about breast implant-related chronic illness and financed it herself anyways, without support from any family members.
Sharing this information is not to declare that all breast surgery is bad, but to spotlight that there are newer, FDA-stated black box label risks, and very real published and medically proven health dangers that accompany this type of implant surgery, dangers that have now been shown to potentially lead to decades of chronic illness, cancer, or in some cases, unfortunately, even death.
While some do report “benefits” from certain plastic or cosmetic surgeries, a large percentage of people getting cosmetic surgery may likely already have clinical body dysmorphia and feelings of depression; people typically are not screened for these comorbidities before getting surgery. This is because it has become normalized to profit off the insecurities, commercialized beauty sickness, and general internalized sense of worthlessness people are led to develop by negative sociocultural body ideals, narcissistic and toxic feminist influences, and loosely regulated marketing full of fake promises.
There are multiple reports of celebrities (and regular people) dying or becoming disfigured as a result of cosmetic surgery. In the past seven years, a series of studies have also consistently suggested an increased risk of suicide among women who have undergone cosmetic breast augmentation surgery. The actress Jamie Lee Curtis caused controversy following an interview with The Guardian in which she stated that the cosmetic industry has led to a "genocide" of women who have disfigured themselves with chemical, surgical, and filler-based alteration. And now that many celebrities are indeed more openly talking about why they got their implants removed, there’s been a noticeable trend toward a more natural look when it comes to these particular body parts. The comedian Ali Wong has joked in her stand-up that, "In the ’90s, in high school, guys, they weren’t into charismatic A cups. But things have changed."
So what do you do when perfection-driven toxic femininity is unquestionably increasing the rates of chronic illness? Millions of people, mostly women, have surgery, get actual poison injections, and take weight loss medications they most likely medically do not need in pursuit of vanity or so-called happiness, causing their bodies to deteriorate into a diseased inflammatory state on a cyclical hamster wheel of unwell.
Data shows that breast implant removal surgery has grown by 653% over the past several years, outpacing nearly all other tracked surgical cosmetic procedures. According to a 2020 American Society of Plastic Surgeons Insights and Trends Report, breast augmentation procedures have decreased 9% in the past 20 years.
Nonetheless, thousands of women are still suffering from long-term, debilitating breast implant side effects, and folks are still inserting dangerous foreign objects into themselves on purpose, seemingly without a care in the world.
And countless women who do complain about their health following implant surgery are widely dismissed and gaslit by medical professionals. It is nearly impossible to get insurance to cover an explant surgery.
There are still so many women complaining about side effects from breast implants that there are more than 250 breast implant illness support groups online with thousands of members. (See below for more resources).
In one population-based research study on breast implant illness, 97% of women surveyed reported that breast implants negatively affected their health; 96% of respondents had implants placed for cosmetic reasons, and 51% had silicone implants. The most common symptoms associated with breast implant illness reported in the study were brain fog (95%), chronic fatigue (92%), joint pain (80%), and hair loss (74%).
Other medical research findings report that symptoms can also include numbness and tingling in the extremities; dry eyes and/or blurred vision; breast pain; rashes and/or hives; food sensitivity/intolerance; flu-like symptoms and/or low-grade fever; and difficulty breathing.
In a published article and interview, Abbey reflected that she first discovered a breast implant illness (BII) support group after multiple specialists told her she was “crazy” for linking her debilitating symptoms to BII. The article states that as her symptoms got worse, Abbey’s friend, who is a nurse, recommended she join a Facebook support group, and she “scrolled for hours and just read women’s posts about the same thing. Honestly, that page quite literally saved my life, and changed my life, because I don’t know if I would ever have made the decision to explant had I not had that community.” The article adds that Abbey had her implants removed in 2023 and claims that her symptoms disappeared almost immediately: “I remember coming out of surgery, and it was like I could see again, the rashes went away, I had no more joint pain, I could work out again.”
FDA, World Health Organization Issue New Warnings About Dangers of Breast Implants and Increased Cancer Risks
In 2016, the World Health Organization designated breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) as a T-cell lymphoma cancer that can develop following breast implants. The FDA issued a black box warning about the dangers of breast implants and more formally defined the symptoms of breast implant illness as including, but not being limited to: “fatigue, problems with memory or concentration/brain fog, joint and muscle pain, hair loss, weight changes, anxiety, and depression.”
Many incorrectly assume that only silicone implants can be harmful, when, in fact, silicone is actually present in the shells of many saline implants, per published research.All implants, and not just silicone implants, can potentially cause illness, and implants can also naturally make breast cancers harder to detect.
According to the highly-rated nonprofit breastcancer.org: symptoms of breast implant illness can occur in any type of breast implant, including silicone gel-filled, saline-filled, smooth surface, textured surface, round, or teardrop-shaped; BII symptoms can develop whether implants have ruptured or stayed intact; and BII symptoms can appear any time after implant surgery—some people start to develop breast implant illness symptoms immediately, while others develop them years later.
It was only around five years ago that the FDA required doctors to provide patients with a checklist of potential implant complications; Diana Zuckerman, PhD, founder of the National Center for Health Research, said in an article that this doesn’t always happen and might be counteracted by the surgeons still (falsely) assuring their clients they are still safe.
Fieldrose.org
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The Benefits of a Plant-Heavy Diet
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Resources:
FDA: What To Know About Breast Implants
FDA: Breast Implant Risks and Complications
Breastcancer.org: Breast Implant Illness
Support Groups:
Breast Implant Illness Research and Recovery
Additional References:
Knoedler S, Alfertshofer M, Rams DJ, Matar DY, Knoedler L, Sofo G, Könneker S, Kim BS, Orgill DP, Panayi AC, Schenck TL. Breast Implant Removal Surgery: A Data-driven Look at Growing Trends. Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2024 Dec 20;12(12):e6402. doi: 10.1097/GOX.0000000000006402. PMID: 39712382; PMCID: PMC11661728.
Magno-Padron DA, Luo J, Jessop TC, Garlick JW, Manum JS, Carter GC, Agarwal JP, Kwok AC. A population-based study of breast implant illness. Arch Plast Surg. 2021 Jul;48(4):353-360. doi: 10.5999/aps.2020.02117. Epub 2021 Jul 15. PMID: 34352944; PMCID: PMC8342259.
Sansone RA, Sansone LA. Cosmetic surgery and psychological issues. Psychiatry (Edgmont). 2007 Dec;4(12):65-8. PMID: 20436768; PMCID: PMC2861519.
Wee CE, Younis J, Isbester K, Smith A, Wangler B, Sarode AL, Patil N, Grunzweig K, Boas S, Harvey DJ, Kumar AR, Feng LJ. Understanding Breast Implant Illness, Before and After Explantation: A Patient-Reported Outcomes Study. Ann Plast Surg. 2020 Jul;85(S1 Suppl 1):S82-S86. doi: 10.1097/SAP.0000000000002446. PMID: 32530850; PMCID: PMC7294749.
*Name changed at the request of the individual I spoke to, who offered their personal experience, which will be highlighted along with other interviews in future articles on this topic as part of a series and book.
If you are interested in being interviewed as part of this book, please email me at fieldrosecomms@gmail.com.