Ruby's letter to Judge Spector

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:04:31 -0500

From:

August 16, 1999

Honorable Judge Spector

P.O. Box 911

Bay City, MI 48707

Dear Judge Spector:

I can not appear in your court to give witness in the Dow Reorganization Plan because I am house-bound, very sick and very broke. My medicine alone has cost us a little over ten thousand dollars per year since 1982.

In 1967 I had Dow implants, and both my doctor and I were lied to by the people at Dow Corning. I have personally talked to the Dow Corning people and was told my hard implants would never be a health problem, and there was no need to ever have them removed.

Not to this day have they told me anything else, even though I just found out FDA ordered them to inform us differently some time ago. Certainly they have never offered to help with the expense of removing my implants. Someone I talked to thought they had an offer to help in that area; if so, it was kept secret from me. It is too late for me to have the implants removed at this point, since Dow told my doctor to use a very large needle and withdraw fluid as my implants got hard after the second year.

I am dying your honor. Silicone is effecting virtually all the major organs in my body. It is very painful as well.

The last time I talked to Dow, a number of years ago, they asked me to send a copy of my medical records to them. I did and they answered several months later by filing bankruptcy.

Sir, for many years now the victims of Dow implants have been treated like we are really dumb, or boob conscious bimbos. The vast majority of us are not your honor. Yes, we made a mistake. Many who opted for implants had cancer surgery or other deformity and were trying to restore a normal appearance. These patients really should not have been exposed to this kind of treatment and product.

Those like me had other reasons, but we were relatively healthy both physically and mentally or we would not have opted for elective surgery to correct our problems. Mine was that I had breast fed four children when it wasn’t the "In" thing to do. Following the delivery of my last child my doctor recommended the implants as a way to correct my fallen breasts. I trusted him.

Not to take too much of your time sir, I just wanted to give you a short version of "who I am". And to tell you a couple of the objections I have to this reorganization plan. And I have many.

This plan is written so no one can understand it unless they have not only a law degree, but an IQ that is in the genius level. I do not have a law degree, although I do consider myself reasonably intelligent.

As you will notice your honor, the misrepresentations and omissions that characterized Dow’s manufacturing and marketing strategies of their silicone implants run throughout the plan as it applies to giving some relief to implant victims. First they put much too low an amount of money in the list for those who can provide complicated and costly qualification documentation. (Just to have one of their implants should qualify anyone.) Then it says very plainly that this relief is not guaranteed, and qualified members may receive greatly reduced amounts, or nothing at all.

If I understand the plan correctly, it also states we will receive more "if money is available" than the other manufacturers paid. Regardless of the rhetoric, Dow’s plan does not contain enough money for us to get what the other claimants got, and some of us nothing at all.

Then the plan’s actual distribution is calculated to ask dying people to take money when they get around to paying it out over a period of years. Whatever is available. No guarantee, you understand. Also, there is nothing in the plan to compensate for physical deformities caused by the Dow implants. I am one of many who fall into this category as well.

Out of the money Dow puts into this plan for the women and their attorneys we are supposed to pay the MDL To see that we meet rigid standards or we get nothing? My punctures, which were at their direction, are not even covered in this plan. And no sir, the silicone bag does not just go back together like a tire with a nail in it.

I am aware that Michigan would like to protect their own and the employee’s jobs. We are not trying to bankrupt Dow. I am also aware Dow is spending huge sums to fund "independent" favorable research, to influence politicians, and on public relations and attorney fees.

For many of us the liability issue boils down to a medical product manufacturer’s responsibility to confirm safety of a product before putting or keeping it on the market.

For instance, after the lead additive was banned from gasoline, the law was changed from "We can’t prove it hurts anyone", to "We must prove it doesn’t hurt anyone." Dow sold implants for thirty years and could never prove them safe simply because they are not safe. A reasonable person could argue that if Dow knew about the poison they were implanting in our bodies they should not be allowed to handle chemicals of any kind.

And conversely Judge Spector, if they didn’t know about the poison they were implanting in our bodies, shouldn’t they also be disqualified from handling chemicals of any kind unless and until they could prove that they were competent to do so?

Thus, what this really boils down to is a hard and dirty fight between a large, seemingly insensitive corporation, and a group of terminally ill people who, along with their families, are experiencing prolonged physical and financial hardships.

All things considered, I feel the right and honorable thing to do is force Dow to immediately send a check in a meaningful amount to each of the people who have implants. (Cuts Dow’s long term cost and at least partially resolves a sad affair for the relief of both parties.)

Since Dow kept changing ingredients in their implants, the recipients do not share identical reactions. Some die before others. We will all die from the same thing your honor, just at different times. I have not been able to work enough years to even draw SS, although I worked one year and made over one hundred thousand dollars as I was one of the first five women in Texas to go into Commercial Real Estate. My career lasted less than one and one-half years, before implants began to cause debilitating problems. Because people trusted Dow at that time, for many years my doctors could not diagnose the cause of my gradually deteriorating illness. Implants as the root cause were not considered until the damage from silicone seepage had been done.

I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time your honor. Most people like you have had no prior reason to understand the full scope of the history and effects silicone implants have had on so many trusting women. Because of the intense and underhanded fight Dow is waging through manipulated press, "research" and political lobbying, it must still be hard for you to understand that this could even happen in America. It is really hard for us who have been targeted in this medical travesty to understand also.

My husband was a senior marketing executive with several large companies before he had to stop work and take care of me. He is aware of the rationale behind the long, hard and expensive fight Dow is putting up. If you would like enlightenment how these Goliath strategies work behind corporate doors to wear down and eliminate the Davids, he will be happy to fill you in.

Incidentally, my husband says the argument that Dow Chemical shouldn’t share in the culpability of the activities of Dow Corning is ludicrous. He likens it to the parents claiming ignorance when their kid uses the family stash of rat poison to systematically kill off the neighborhood’s pets. If Dow Chemical knew (highly likely) and did nothing, it should pay for complicity. If the parent corporation did not know (highly unlikely), it should pay for extreme incompetence.

My husband goes on to say what we have here is a classic example of CYA, a common term in the corporate lexicon. Responsible companies deal with it before the product is released. Some only when they’re forced to after the fact. Are Dow’s ears getting red now?

I’ve long ago given up hope of receiving any form of just compensation for more than 20 years of suffering, for both me and my family. All I am asking now as you deliberate the ramifications of your judgment is that you grant implant persons enough to pay for their food and shelter (we are unemployable), as well as medical bills (we are uninsurable), the costs of our medications, and burial expenses (to keep our final act from being one more financial burden for our families), to give us and our families a semblance of comfort in the time remaining.

At least add the burial fees in this reorganization plan. How much is each life lost worth? And why is one worth more than another?

Please consider this. If someone misrepresented a medical device and implanted it in your body at a very early age, you could not work and have the career you have now, not to mention the constant pain and suffering from trying to accomplish the simplest household task. What would you like to see happen? What would your needs be? These are our needs also, you honor.

Thank you for your time and know I am not trying to undermine a company and hurt a lot of employees. It just makes sense for a company to take responsibility for the humans that they have treated like test animals without even telling them.

If you really need scientific information, please have someone conduct an objective study of the age and number of deaths among implant persons and compare that with the rest of the population. I think you will really find the results of that study hard to believe, but it will let you know just one thing that is happening to us. I am fifty-eight and will not live to be sixty. My grandmother lived to be ninety-one.

I am in the group that did not individually sue Dow because I am not physically or mentally able to endure that process, so a fair and equitable resolution for the members of the class action would be very much appreciated. Our food, shelter, medical treatment and burial are truly in your hands your honor.

Sincerely,

Ruby Bartlett