Dow Corning sold defective implants it knew about — 400,000 suits and a $3.2B bill

Dow Corning was founded in 1943 as a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Corning Glass Works to develop silicone products. In 1962, Dow Corning introduced the Cronin-Gerow silicone breast implant, the first commercially available breast implant. The product became wildly popular — by the mid-1980s, an estimated 2 million American women and 4 million worldwide had received silicone breast implants. Dow Corning dominated the market.

But internally, the company had known about safety problems for years. By 1975, Dow Corning researchers had documented that silicone gel could migrate through the body if the implant shell ruptured. The company never warned the public or the FDA. Lawsuits began in 1984, when Maria Stern won a $1.7 million verdict against Dow Corning. By 1992, the FDA had received thousands of reports of ruptures and alleged autoimmune disorders including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. That year, the FDA imposed a moratorium on silicone-gel breast implants.

The flood of lawsuits forced Dow Corning into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1995 — not because it was insolvent, but to cap its liability. The company spent nine years in bankruptcy, emerging in June 2004 only after agreeing to a $3.2 billion class-action settlement trust fund. The case permanently damaged the company's reputation in clinical markets and forced it to largely withdraw from medical device sales. Independent reviews, including a 1999 Institute of Medicine study, later found no causal link between silicone implants and systemic disease, but the damage to Dow Corning was already done.