Results tagged “medicine”

Since actors pretending to be doctors in Chinese infomercials are no longer legal, we've decided to delight you today with one of these hilarious - and soon to be rare - specimens. Everything you would ever want in a shanzhai pill ad is here: clipped together Hollywood scenes, a laowai "expert"... and John Voight as POTUS.

Sad news for anyone hoping to play the role of laowai doctor #3, China has issued a law effectively banning actors and celebrities from appearing in medical ads. A new notice posted by SARFT bars people without medical qualifications from making health claims in an attempt to cut down on the snake oil sales tactics rampant throughout the country. The restrictions come after an internet hunt exposed at least 12 fake experts selling medicine under different pseudonyms in Shandong alone. Source:Reuters

• China will start providing two imported HIV drugs, Viread and Kaletra, to patients who have started developing resistance to cheaper, domestic alternatives. This means that nine of 20 drugs to combat AIDS are now available to patients in China.
• The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has condemned China's deportation of a musician from Cape Town, South Africa, who was ordered to leave China within 48 hours when health authorities found she was HIV-positive. Apparently, the woman was not even informed or counselled about her HIV test.
• Health authorities in Henan province claim that significant improvements have been made in controlling HIV/AIDS and that death rates there are "closer to the normal mortality rate and lower than the national average". According to them, Zhumadian, one of the cities hit by illegal blood sales in the 1990s, has seen death rates more than halved to 5 percent in the past six years.

Too much of a good thing, as they say, is bad. China is supposed to have the world's highest rate of antibiotics abuse and the problem, apart from killing an estimated 80,000 a year, is leading to an increased resistance of bacteria to drugs, resulting in a rising number of recessive syphilis cases, among others. An ambitious two-year project has now been launched to train over 30,000 medical staff across China in the responsible use of antibiotics.

Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera reports from Beijing of the discrimination that Hepatitis B carriers in China have to deal with — in school and at the workplace. Most of this discrimination, of course, is rooted in the widespread ignorance about the virus throughout society, and results in Hep B carriers being shunned in the same way as HIV/AIDS carriers are shunned in China.

Shanghai-based Canadian documentary photographer Ryan Pyle informs us:

It appears that Li Guoxing, the first recipient of a face transplant surgery in China as been confirmed dead. Li Guoxing received a face transplant surgery in 2006 from surgeon Guo Shuzhong in Xi'an, China. If you can remember Mr. Li, 30 years old when he had the surgery, had is face ripped off by a bear while hunting in rural Yunnan province where he lived in a small village community. Mr. Li's death, it has been said, was due to an infection because he wasn't taking prescribed immune-system drugs properly. Another report says he was favoring herbal medicines instead. No final report on the death will be available because Mr. Li has been buried for several months now, and no autopsy was completed.

Continue reading "China's first face transplant recipient dead"

Big week in food safety and health-related news. First the melamine eggs and the tainted soy sauce and wasabi, then the cholera outbreak in Hainan, and now this — 10 men have died in Singapore from complications resulting from the consumption of illegal China-made sex enhancement pills. The Straits Times reports:

ILLEGAL sex enhancement pills have killed six more men here in the past five months, bringing the drug's death toll to 10 this year.

Continue reading "10 men in Singapore die from illegal China-made sex pills"

Acupuncture may be one of the most widely-accepted forms of traditional Chinese medicine, but did you know there was a DIY alternative?

Turns out that the ever-miraculous Viagra can do more than help you get it on: recent findings show that the drug increases blood flow to the lungs, potentially enhancing performance on the field, as well as in the bedroom. But Olympian users of the famous little blue pill, or "Vitamin V" as it's known in the athletic world, shouldn't have to curb their habits just yet, since testing is probably still in too early a stage to ban the drug for 2008.

A friend of ours went to the Huashi Pharmacy, at the Portman, to purchase the inhaler she uses due to asthma. She didn't have a prescription, but she never needed one before. As long as she had lived in Shanghai, such meds were always over-the-counter, perhaps because of the excellent air quality found in the city. But on Saturday, the workers at the pharmacy told her she could no longer buy the inhaler she needed to breathe without a prescription. Why? "Because of the Olympics," she was told. A little more digging shows that certain inhalers are considered stimulants by the International Olympic Committee, and thus new regulations were put into effect. Luckily, our friend had health insurance and walked to her doctor's office, got a prescription and her meds — the expenses were all covered, but for uninsured asthmatics, this policy change could be quite a surprise hit to the pocketbook. Just thought we'd warn you: Don't wait until the middle of an asthma attack to get all your paperwork in order.

The above is from a report about the cancer patients affected by the corrupted medicine from Shanghai's Hualian Pharmaceutical. According to an article from Jan. 10:

Under the guidance of and with the participation of a joint investigation team set up between the Ministry of Health and State Drug and Food Administration, concerned departments in Shanghai identified the cause of the accident: Hualian's staff mixed Vincristine Sulfate into Methotrexate for injection and Cytarabine for injection, and this caused damage to the drugs and made them unqualified and unusable.

1. university students who might be studying medicine and could use the cash, 2. people who want to further the cause of medicine (and who might be sick themselves, and thus have a stake in it), and 3. people who are in it just for the money.

A little girl from Hunan province born with her heart outside of the body and rib cage has come to Shanghai for medical treatment. The congenital defect, known as ectopia cordis, is extremely rare. In China, only two cases have been recorded and worldwide, over 200. The girl's heart is protected by only a layer of skin and nothing else, and we imagine that sleeping in any other position than on her back would be life-threatening for her. The girl has just received treatment in Shanghai, and the surgery has been said to be successful. Unfortunately (and as usual), no other details were given.

Chronic pain. Debilitating illness. There's little fun to be had from these subjects. So hats off to Shanghai Daily and its over zealous/under zealous/possibly nonexistent subs' desk for throwing a hyperbole cherry bomb in to the toilet bowl of one individual's suffering. The following, which featured in Friday's paper, is best if you imagine it's being read by Peter Cushing: STABBING. Gnawing. Burning. Severe pain can rip your life apart and make you pray for...