A senior Johnson & Johnson executive included inappropriate jokes about pictures of scantily clad women in a presentation on the company’s controversial transvaginal mesh implants, a court has heard.

Piet Hinoul, a vice-president of J&J’s product development arm, Ethicon, was speaking at a transvaginal mesh meeting in France in March 2009, discussing the devices and the response they produced in women’s bodies.

The two companies are facing a class action in Australia, launched by Shine Lawyers, which alleges the implants’ flaws caused lasting and debilitating pain for thousands of women worldwide.

Hinoul’s presentation concluded with two slides showing revealing pictures of women in underwear, who were not mesh patients.

One pictured the crotch area of a woman, and included the caption: “But, less is more! We recommend dry cleaning, this bikini can shrink with wash [sic].”

Another slide featured a model in lingerie, with the caption: “The [transvaginal mesh] group already knew: a mesh gives better support.”

Hinoul was asked about the slides last week in the federal court of Australia, where Ethicon and J&J are facing a class action involving more than 700 women, who say the implants have ruined their lives.

“It was an inappropriate comment. It was a play on words on a ‘better mesh for a better support’,” he said, referring to the picture of the model in lingerie.

“It was an inappropriate joke.”

Asked to explain the dry cleaning caption, Hinoul replied: “We recommend dry cleaning, could lead – I can’t ... I don’t know,” he said.

The judge, justice Anna Katzmann, interjected, asking Hinoul: “Just a moment, you presented these slides?”

The barrister Tony Bannon SC, who is representing Australian mesh patients, asked Hinoul: “But is this the way Ethicon or you treated these issues, by putting in images like slides 35 and 36? Is there an explanation of it?”

Hinoul replied: “I agree, it was an inappropriate comment.”

Bannon pressed on: “But not a reflection on any attitude you have to women who suffer problems from these [devices]?”

Hinoul: “No, not at all.”

Bannon then asked whether the court could expect to see any similar remarks during the rest of the hearing.

Hinoul replied: “At times, I have had moments where I have made bad jokes, but they are very few and they certainly don’t represent how I feel about these patients and how we treat them.”

The case, and similar actions in the United States and the UK, have cast light on the way some within the medical profession treat women.

Patients have spoken of presenting to doctors in severe pain, only to have their concerns about the implants dismissed or disbelieved.

Earlier in the class action, a series of emails revealed French gyneacologists joked about telling their patients to try anal intercourse as a solution to the painful sex associated with mesh complications.

“It is no less true that sodomy could be a good alternative!” one doctor wrote.

Another doctor made bizarre jokes about the challenge he faced in raising the matter with patients.

“I said to myself, there you go, for your next prolapse [patient], you talk to her about orgasms. OK! But also about fellatio, sodomy, the clitoris with or without G-spot etc,” he wrote.

“I am sure of one thing: that I would very quickly be treated like some kind of sex maniac (which, perhaps, I am) or a pervert, or an unhealthily curious person.”

J&J’s pelvic mesh and tape implants were used to treat stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, common complications of childbirth.

In many cases, the operations have been successful. But for hundreds in Australia, and many more across the world, the mesh implants have caused life-altering pain.

The class action alleges J&J failed to conduct rigorous testing of the devices. The risks were downplayed to surgeons and patients, it alleges.

The company is also accused of aggressively marketing to doctors, pitching the devices as a fast and cheap option that would boost their profits.