On Thursday March 21, Dick Hazelton, Johnna Matthews, and Morriw Newell came to the Kiva in Moore Hall and presented the past and current controversy involved with Dow Corning. Dick Hazelton is a retired Chairman and CEO of Dow, and Johnna Matthews and Morrie Newell are public relations professionals.
Mr. Hazelton started by showing the audience a video of the past controversy the enveloped Dow. The video included footage from various talk shows and famous doctors and women that were directly affected by the breast implant.
The most horrible thing about this controversy is the fact that there has been no scientific research to incriminate and blame the Dow Company for things that went wrong and how many women got very sick. Dow went through many tough times and they mentioned all of the various law suits. They even said many of the cases used the same paper work because a lot of them had the same spelling errors.
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Breast implant: An explanted, ruptured silicone im...They also mentioned the fact that in one court case the jury found nothing wrong with Dow and still awarded one-woman money because she was very sick and had children to take care of.
They noted that there are many flaws involved in the legal system and that there needs to be reform because it is hurting everyone in the end. It just doesn?t seem right than someone can sue and win and not really even win. Hazelton brought up this good point that many in the audience agreed with and do so that there is a huge flaw in the legal system.
In the end Dow had to set up a trust fund that would be built up to 3.2 billion dollars and would leave room for future law suits and settlements. Through all of this Dow still managed to keep a good name because of the good Public relations and keeping their head on straight still doing research even when they didn?t need to. Dow shelled out over 4 billion dollars in the end to this huge breast implant controversy.
The presentation was very interesting and brought a close to the 2 day events at Central Michigan University and shed a lot of light upon the facts and I do think that more people understand that Dow wasn?t the bad guy and they showed that very well.
Dow Corning Tennis Classic
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