KNAPPSTER George Knapp is a longtime reporter and anchor for KLAS Channel 8.

Thursday, April 10, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Knappster: Legislature may leave implant victims in cold

By George Knapp

Time is running out for thousands of women who have received silicone breast implants to seek financial remedy for the poison that is creeping through their bodies. Much has been written about the health consequences of breast implants, and you might think, from reading newspaper articles, that everyone with a problem has been compensated.

This is not the case. The horrible health consequences of implants often do not materialize for many years. And while it is true that Dow Chemical, one of the principal developers and marketers of silicone implants, has reached settlements with some women whose lives have been destroyed because of implants, there exists an entire strata of victims who have received no assistance whatsoever. In front of me sits a stack of horror stories, material that would sicken anyone with a conscience. Cancer, fybromyalgia, fibrosis, rheumatism, respiratory disease, paralysis and, eventually, suicide, are common. Many of the women in question did not get self-contained implants. Instead, they were injected with silicone itself. No protective coating, no neat little package, just direct injections from a needle. They were assured it was entirely safe. That assurance was a lie. Now, for many of them, the silicone is oozing out of their skin, clogging their lungs, constricting their other organs, killing them slowly.

Right now, there's a bill pending in Carson City that offers a ray of hope to some of the most egregious victims of this mass chemical poisoning. Assembly Bill 50 doesn't ask our legislators to take a position on the health debate. It merely asks that the Legislature extend a legal window for a period of one year to allow some of the most debilitated victims to file something, to get it on the record and into the system before they die.

Passage of the bill would not cost Nevada a dime. In fact, it could bring millions of dollars into our state. Opponents (you can guess who) have told lawmakers that such a bill would benefit only 40-50 Nevada women. "Only" 40 or 50 women? Women who, in all likelihood, will die because of the toxic crap that is pulsing through their systems? Can we add in the number of children who will be without mothers, or husbands who will be without wives? If the Legislature has time to pass resolutions honoring Ronald Reagan, or measures to authorize new license plates, or studies of the elk herd and grouse population, you'd think it might have time for "only" 40 or 50 families.

AB50 will die in the next week unless people call their lawmakers right now. Assemblyman Bernie Anderson of Reno, chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, has told proponents that he won't give the bill a hearing because he doesn't think it will pass the Senate. Why not let them hear it? Why not? Again, this is a bill that won't cost Nevada anything. If it doesn't pass, it has the potential to cost the state plenty in unreimbursed medical expenses. The bill doesn't indict anyone. All it does is provide a one-year window of opportunity for egregious victims to seek their day in court. A court will decide if their claims are just.

AB50 has 17 co-sponsors. In the Senate, it has the support of Democratic Minority Leader Dina Titus and Republican Dennis Nolan. It will die a quick death unless it gets a hearing right away and gets out of committee by the April 11 deadline. If this is an issue that seems worthy to you, please call your lawmaker today. You could also call Assemblyman Anderson at 775-684-8563 or e-mail to banderson@asm.state.nv.us.

As a final sobering thought, consider this: The number of women and teenage girls who underwent breast implant surgery more than doubled from 1997 to 2002. So did the number of women who are getting implants removed.

Knappster's

body double

Is it the real Saddam or is it Memorex? Like television viewers and intelligence operatives everywhere, I've been wondering just how many decoys and body doubles the Iraqi dictator really has. That guy who showed up on Iraqi TV after the first night of bombing looked like he'd just crawled out of the Little Darlings nudie joint after a three-day booze-and-crank bender.

Gigantic bags under his eyes. Skin the color of rotten clams. And what was that jiggly, turkey-like, suitcase-sized sag of creased and mottled flesh that was hanging under his chin? Geez, he looked about as healthy as Nick Nolte's police mugshot. I don't know if it was the real Saddam, but if that imagery was meant to instill confidence among his people, it fell a little short.

The more recent footage of Saddam wading into a crowd of crazed, gun-toting street people seemed even less believable. If you were Saddam, would you expose your sphincter to a group of breakdancing, bomb-weary, sleep-deprived peasants, all of whom seemed to be packing rifles? The guy in that videotape seemed stiff and surreal, waving like a Rose Bowl queen runner-up, a permanent smile plastered on his face as he tossed a startled baby into the air, Michael Jackson style.

The job of body double for Saddam probably sounded pretty good when candidates first read it in the classified ads of the Baghdad Mercury. "Wanted--jowly men with thick moustaches to pose as megalomaniac warlord. Perks include sleeping in a different palace every night, riding in bulletproof limos, sleeping with the cream of Iraqi womanhood. Uniforms and berets provided. Experience with anthrax not required. Unequal opportunity employer."

Sure, it probably sounded like a dream job in the beginning. Say you've been having a billing dispute with the goat butcher down the block. Send his ass to a firing squad. The landlord is bitching about the rent? Ask him if he's ever had a cattle prod on his gonads. And let's see your wife mouth off when you come home from work wearing that getup and carrying a severed head in your briefcase. But then reality sets in.

Suddenly, it occurs to you that everyone in the world wants to kill you. Every time you cruise through the drive-up window at the Basra McDonald's, the damned taste-tester eats half your fries. You never know if your serial rapist son is glad to see you, or if it's just an Uzi in his pocket. And, Allah forbid if you should try to get a good night's sleep. You bunk down in an out-of-the-way suburb, hoping for a little shut-eye, but the next thing you know the living room is blown away by a Tomahawk missile. A job like this had better have one hell of a 401(k) plan.

If I were to have a cadre of body doubles, I'd insist that at least a few of them looked a lot better than I do. Pick a couple of sand dune studmuffins, the kind of guys who'd be finalists on "Babylonian Joe Millionaire." Ideally, the guys down at the nerve gas factory would deduce that I'm a bad mamma-jamma, a leader so buff that the rabble couldn't wait to volunteer for suicide bombing missions. And when my double sauntered through the lunchroom down at the Veil Emporium, I'd want the girls to swoon, whispering that I look fatter on TV, and wondering to themselves if I'd been working out with a troupe of Kurdish Chippendale dancers. ("Oooh, Saddam Knappy cannot camoflauge the rippling six-pack beneath that bulletproof vest." "Yes, verily, he is erect as a Bedouin tent pole that has not yet been strafed by Bradley fighting vehicles.")

In the end, it's going to be bad news for anyone who remotely looks like the real Saddam. If the body doubles are smart, they're already putting scissors to the 'stache, throwing the uniforms on a funeral pyre, and telling the limo driver that they will catch a bus to work. Then it's off for a little R&R at the Damascus HoJo's. When it's all over, perhaps we will need a CIA version of "What's My Line" to determine which one is the real Saddam. ("Contestant Number Two, when you gassed the Iranians, did you use sarin or essence of bean curd?") No matter how you cut it, this isn't a career with long-term possibilities.