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Interpol seeks arrest of breast implant company founder Mas

Interpol has issued a ‘red notice’ for the arrest of Frenchman Jean-Claude Mas, founder of the breast implant company, Poly Implant Prothese, PIP, at the centre of a widespread women's health scare.

Reuters/Interpol
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The company, once the world's third largest breast implant company supplying more than 100,000 implants a year, was shut down and its products banned last year after it was revealed to have been using non-authorised silicone gel.

Mas, 72, whose picture appears on the Interpol website, is listed as being sought in Costa Rica for offences concerning "life and health."

On Friday, France's health ministry advised 30,000 women with breast implants made by PIP, to have them removed, saying that while there is no proven cancer risk, they could rupture.

Tens of thousands of women in over 65 countries around the world have the same implants, made from industrial rather than medical quality silicone. Most of them live in South America and western Europe.

Some 42,000 women in Britain are thought to have the implants, according to a government watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

The agency said it had received 411 reports of PIP implants failing in British patients since 2001.

More than 250 British women are taking court action against clinics where they had operations to insert PIP implants, and others are expected to follow suit.

Interpol's red notice is tantamount to an international arrest warrant, though the agency, as a facilitator of cooperation among national police forces, does not have the authority to issue warrants in the formal sense.

 

 

 

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