Poly Implant Prothèse

Poly Implant Prothèse was a French company founded in 1991 that produced silicone gel breast implants. The company was preemptively liquidated in 2010 following the revelation that they had been illegally manufacturing and selling breast implants made from cheaper industrial-grade silicone since 2001 . The hundreds of thousands of unapproved implants sold globally by PIP from 2001 to 2010 were found to have a 500% higher risk of rupturing or leaking than approved models, as well as being implicated in at several deaths due to systemic toxicity and several cases of induced breast cancer. The scandal, which produced fears of a massive health disaster, prompted a full recall of the company's implants by the French health ministry in 2010, by which time the company was already defunct.
PIP was founded in 1991 by the Frenchman Jean-Claude Mas, born in 1939, a former butcher and later medical sales representative for the Bristol Myers company for 15 years. Mas had previously teamed up with plastic surgeon Henri Arion, who had introduced breast implants to France in 1965. After Arion died in a plane crash, Mas went on alone and launched PIP in 1991.

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