They are holding an inquiry into the procedure, used to ease incontinence, after some women experienced painful complications.
Last year, the then Scottish health secretary Alex Neil urged health boards to suspend use of the implants.
Adam Slater, a US compensation lawyer, said "women are not told the truth" about the devices.
He was lead trial counsel in the first pelvic mesh trial against Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon, resulting in a compensatory and punitive damages verdict of $11.1m.
Giving evidence to members of the Scottish Parliament committee via videoconference, Mr Slater said the closest comparison to the mesh implant situation he could think of was asbestos.
He said: "Something that was thought to be a wonderful invention for a long time and now everybody in the world knows it's something you wouldn't want to go near.
"It's the closest analogy I can find to these horrible devices that are now in so many women."
The committee is considering calls to suspend mesh implant operations. Operations continue to be carried out by some health boards despite the health secretary's call to stop using them.
Mr Slater has worked almost exclusively on mesh cases in the US since 2007 and is currently the lead counsel for more than 7,000 cases in New Jersey.
He said some doctors are now refusing to use the devices, with one even branding them a "social cancer".
He told MSPs that studies into the safety of mesh have been influenced by manufacturers, who enjoy a "close relationship" with regulators of the products.
The lawyer said thousands of women in the US are suing both manufacturers and doctors on the grounds that mesh devices are defective or that there was a failure to warn them about the dangers and complications.
The US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), indicated last April that it plans to reclassify mesh for pelvic organ prolapse as "high risk", but is yet to do so.
Mr Slater urged UK regulator the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to "look at the studies that are relied on by the mesh manufacturers".
"Most of the studies they rely on are written or investigated by paid consultants," he said.
"I would throw those in the garbage immediately because if somebody is being paid by the manufacturer, there is a financial bias."
He added: "There has never been a high-level study...that has ever been done that has proven the mesh to be safe and effective."

Bruce Rourke's collie attacked the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, at a Scotmid store in Castle Street, Tayport, on 5 January..
Rourke, 57, from Tayport, pleaded guilty on summary complaint to a charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act.
Dundee Sheriff Court heard the girl was with her mother, who was using an ATM outside the shop.
At the same time Rourke was tying up the dog a few feet away. The animal lunged at the girl before biting her on the body.
She was taken to Dundee's Ninewells Hospital and given antibiotics as a precaution but suffered permanent injury.
Sheriff Alastair Brown deferred sentence until next month and said he may make an order for the dog to be destroyed.

Residents were evacuated from Kirkennan Drive, Dalbeattie, on Tuesday afternoon after the weapons were found while a house was being cleared.
A team from the Royal Logistic Corp examined them and found them to be inactive.
The A710 (Port Road) through Dalbeattie was closed for two hours during the alert.
A spokesman for the Royal Logistic Corp bomb disposal team said: "The ordnance was fully examined and found to be inactive. It has been removed from the house and we have taken it away."
Vaginal mesh implants are as dangerous as asbestos, MSPs on Holyrood's petitions committee have been told.
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A "dangerously out of control" dog could be put down after it bit a 10-year-old girl outside a Fife shop.
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Bomb disposal officers have removed a shell and hand grenade from a house in Dumfries and Galloway.