How Deep Is My Silicone Valley?
Silicone breast implants are back in the news, as the FDA debates ending its 13-year near-total moratorium on the things.
Back in 1992, then-Reason Editor Virginia Postrel wrote a piece for the Wash Post that's just as relevant now, especially since this has never really been about science or safety:
The breast-implant debate reveals at least three other fundamental divisions—about the interests of consumers, of women and of science—that reflect very different sets of values and ways of understanding the world: How much justification must consumers give the government for their choices? Are women liberated by rediscovering their natural femininity or by seizing control over their biological destinies? And, at least for the sake of public policy, how do we sort evidence from anecdote?
Whole thing here.
Over at National Review Online, Sally Satel weighs in on the matter, contending that feminists want to control women's bodies by denying them implants for ideological, not scientific reasons. Which means that that the two groups may have something in common after all.