Corporations Have Been Mangling People With Hernia Mesh For Far Too Long

Learn more about hernia mesh dangers here

A popular brand of surgical mesh used to repair hernias has been found to cause dangerous problems in patients that have it implanted in their bodies. Ring of Fire's Mikme Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this.

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A popular brand of surgical mesh used to repair hernias has been found to cause dangerous problems in patients that have it implanted in their bodies. You know what's so crazy about this story? This has been going on for so long. Johnson and Johnson, for example, knew that the material that was being used in mesh hernia material would cause a whole host of problems. First of all, it would migrate through the body, it would break away, and these pieces of mesh would migrate through the body.

Second of all, it would not allow the site to even heal. The infections are overwhelming. The longterm problems and pain are overwhelming. The reason they know this is because four other companies had been making the same thing, and four other companies had been sued for the same thing, and that took place years ago. But Johnson and Johnson, just like Johnson and Johnson always does, says well, you know, we're going to do it anyways.

It's just like, you know, the baby powder case. A friend of mine just hit them for $4 billion in 22 cases of cancer. Johnson and johnson always focuses on the bottom line, always to the detriment of consumers. Take it from here. I've actually, full dis colure, I've handled these cases. I know a lot about them. I know why the material is causing such danger, but go ahead and talk about that.

Johnson and Johnson, through their little subsidiary, Ethicon, developed these polypropylene meshes, which as you said, other people had already had on the market. Johnson and Johnson wanted in on it because they saw that, hey, everybody else is making a ton of money, we need to develop a polypropylene mesh. Even though we know they're getting sued, don't worry, we're going to make more money than they'll take from us in the courts.

So, they make it, and sure enough it causes migration. It causes adhesion, where it either ... basically becomes a part of the organ, or it makes organs fuse together if they're touching with this mesh. It causes massive infections and horrid inflammation, because of the chemicals in this polypropylene actually hinder the healing process. It makes it harder for the hernia to heal.

And of course, doctors, anytime something like this comes out, unfortunately, these drug reps go out, they say, "Hey, we know you've been using these old meshes, that have been perfectly fine, but here's something new. It's lighter, it's more flexible, it's going to make your patients feel so much better, so use our mesh instead of the old things that have worked for so long."

Let me put this in perspective for you. Okay. You're in a business, and five, six years before, there are hundreds and hundreds of cases saying that this thing that you're about to put on the market will cause bad human injury. Now, for example, if you can imagine, these were actually used for vaginal ... there's a vaginal mesh program. Now, we're talking about hernia mesh, which is the same material. It caused such injury inside a woman's vagina and the whole area around anywhere it touched, it caused these Adhesions, it caused pain that was so bad that woman had to basically have hysterectomies, I mean radical hysterectomies because the pain was so bad.

As you said, the mesh would merge with other tissue, it would merge with other organs, and women died from this. There's no difference in the material we're talking about here, where they use this for small bowel resections sections. They use it for ventral hernia repair. They use it for bilateral tissue flaps. They use it for a whole host of things.