I think you left the last four letters, "sane," off the last word in your title.

I Implicitly trust the Mayo Clinic here, and I know their review found there was no scientific basis for a lawsuit. This may have been after the settlement, I don't know.

I doubt Mayo says you'd be healthier, but the "silicone problem" was pretty much an urban myth.

I doubt Mayo says you'd be healthier

Yes, that's exactly where the crazy starts.

Were these implants he was thinking of installed in the chests of all the lesbian school girls waiting to go to the bathroom in Southern Oklahoma.

I'm pretty sure Mayo noted the problems with any implant - scarring, rupturing, and all the other 'normal' surgical problems. I wonder if this Dr. Coburn means silicone implants are healthier than saline implants, although I'd be surprised to hear that was true, too.

Or, maybe he means after the implants you can earn more money, dance at classier joints, and cut out the prostitution.

Funny, I immediately thought about silicone breast implants, too. Not because they are relevant to the bill, but because why should this moment be differnet htan any other moment.

Personally, a national drive for breast implants is one policy proposal that really catches my eye. Might need some real hands-on work, though.

Damn! So silicone breast implants are therapeutic. Surely there is a basis for a public health program to ensure that people get what they need to be healthy! Let's ask Sen. Coburn if this applies to guys, too. What's sauce for the goose, etc., and all that.

My guess on the healthier claim goes like this:
(1) Silicon implants don't pose any medical risks
(2) People who get plasitic surgury are insecure about their apparance and are consequently likely to consume healthier food, work out etc.

The insanity is concluding from the correlation of health with implants to the causation of health by implants.

Welcome to the new woman mutilation. Rather than come up with more therapies for the faulty breast cancer genes, some doctors are actively advocating preemptive breast removal and implantation. Note that not all women with these gene flaws will develop cancer.

These are the same doctors that refuse to accept that in many cases lumpectomy rather than radical mastectomy has exactly the same prognosis with less distress for the patient.

This may or may not be what Coburn meant, but since you have to have a certain baseline health level to undergo breast augmentation surgery, and because women interested enough to spend thousands on the procedure probably take pretty good care of their bodies in other ways (working out, healthy diet, etc.) the average woman who gets a boob job is probably in better health than the average one who doesn't -- at least around the time she actually has the operation.

Obviously, this does not suggest any causal relationship between getting implants and being in better health, and Coburn should have chosen his words more carefully in that regard.

Unless he really is just plain nuts.

He really is just plain nuts, GB. Even a casual reading of his public pronouncements will confirm that. Do some googling and you'll see.

I'm pretty sure Ru is on the right track here, i.e. some believe that since breast tissue is one of the more likely sites of oncogenesis, removing it makes you healthier in the sense that it reduces the risk of developing breast cancer. This might be true for some very high risk individuals, but to state it as a general proposition is, well, just plain nuts.

Of course the usual suspects who defend whatever anyone who happens to be Republican says, no matter how stupid, will soon confirm, en masse, whether this is the right interpretation of Coburn on their websites, blogs, newsshows, etc.

I think everyone should contact Coburn's office and ask what his stance on the prevention of testicular cancer is.

For the record I think breast tissue should be honored and admired.

And the pedant in me has to remind people that silicon (instead of silicone) implants are going to be very painful.

True, but given the option, you'd rather have the pure silicon ones than the mixed granite implants.

He really is just plain nuts, GB

Yeah, you can try here, for starters. Then, as DFL notes, he diagnosed an epidemic of "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma high schools. This, I think, was his fantasy life slipping out from under its protective religious coating. I'm more apt to label Republicans malign than insane, but Coburn genuinely has a screw loose.

Rampant lesbians with big breasts... hmm...

Coburn may be nuts, but his fantasy world sounds pretty cool.

I think we've got a few more years before anyone from the Old North State can start criticizing other states' choices of senators...

I do usually include that disclaimer, Ramar. Helms could always hold his own in a Who's Battier contest.