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Just remember patients, this is actually your fault!

I have just read with great interest Howard’s response to the letter from Smith and Nephew regarding the Birmingham hip and after my recent experiences with the ASR there is something I wanted to share with everyone. Firstly for those here in Australia, I have been interviewed for the Sunday edition of News Ltd Newspapers (Sunday Mail in Qld, Sunday Telegraph in NSW, Sunday Herald Sun in Vic, etc.) and I believe the story is going nationwide as the interview came out of Canberra, I am also appearing on the Current Affairs program “Meet the Press” on Channel 10 on Sunday morning for a panel discussion which I am led to believe (speaking to the interviewer today) is about everything from approval failures to my experiences to medical company/surgeon ethics! So as this is live it should be interesting, for those outside of Australia it should be available on the web, I will (in conjunction with Earl of course) put up any links after the event that may help everyone to view these.

But what I wanted to share and would be very interested in others experiences, is something that my surgeon told me last week and also after reading Howard’s letter response I think it is even more important. Here in Australia the peak professional body for Orthopaedic Surgeons (apparently these people are ‘independent’ of any medical company or other organisation) is the Australian Orthopaedic Association (AOA). The AOA has recently sent a memo to their members with the following directive:

“When discussing with patients the issue of elevated Cobalt/Chromium levels, please be mindful of the following points. Up until now elevated levels of these two elements have been referred to as ‘Cobalt/Chromium Toxicity’ or ‘Cobalt/Chromium Poisoning’. It is advised that in the current climate, that this should now be referred to as ‘Cobalt/Chromium Sensitivity’! In other words this ‘independent’ organisation is doing everything in their power to protect the medical companies who have produced these products by taking the inference of toxicity or poisoning out of the statement and replacing it with a ‘reaction’ type word in other words, it isn’t our fault for poisoning your bodies, it is your fault for actually daring to react to that poisoning!! Apart from being dumbfounded when I heard this, I must admit that I did very quickly become angry, I would be very interested to hear if anyone else has experienced anything such as this (remembering that I was fortunate that my surgeon shared this with me as he was ‘disgusted’ by the AOA’s actions). So as far as they are concerned the Strokes, Blood Poisoning, Kidney Failure, Poor Bone/Fracture Healing, Tissue Necrosis (death), Hearing/Sight loss/deterioration, just to name a few, are all actually our fault not theirs as our bodies reacted to the poison that was introduced to us, nothing at all to do with the fact that this stuff shouldn’t have been ‘roaming free’ within our systems in the first place!!

I hope everyone has a great weekend, I am looking forward to Sunday morning after 6 months of further declining health, pain and poor mobility I think keeping it ‘short and sweet’ will be my biggest challenge! I would be very interested to hear of others experiences regarding what I have written above and I will also be interested in feedback regarding the media stuff. I look forward to speaking to you all again soon!

Cheers,

Stu Cain

  • Smith & Nephew Letter (earlsview.com)
  • Hip Resurfacing an Alternative to Hip Replacement (hothealthnews.wordpress.com)
  • Smith And Nephew Unveils New Hip Device (smithnephewhip.wordpress.com)
  • DePuy Defective Hip Implant Claims | eLocal (elocallawyers.com)
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