NOT for the first time, thousands of women who have had breast implants are in a panic -- after warnings that those made from soya bean oil may cause cancer or harm unborn children.

But apart from having given soya-loving veggies food for thought, no doubt this development has also given lawyers a new meal ticket as scared 'victims' run to the courts for compensation as well as to their doctors for corrective surgery.

Yet, if reparation is due -- especially in these times of a tearaway compensation culture that seems to set weekly records for how many noughts can be added to awards -- should it not be tempered by the fact that by far the most of these worried women have only themselves to blame?

For some 70 per cent of those who have had soya boob jobs, we are told, did so for purely cosmetic reasons.

I cannot see why people who have been simply pandering to their own vanity should come crying for recompense when they learn too late that tinkering with nature ought only to be done for serious reasons, if at all.