Chinese food and Drug Czar Death Penalty! Now what are you cleaning your teeth with?

[Asher Kelman]

As a preface, I do not trust marketers who want to push additives into our foods and medicines and get us to spray the air, furniture to make things fresh". All this is just dosing us for no good reason! Still, most of these additives do help the marlkets move and that at least is apparently a good thing!

Zheng Xiaoyu [file photo]chinadaily.com.

Now why should I get upset about the fall of a Chinese govenment official? Well I have been following this story for a while. At first it was just a little worrisome, a footnote on May 16th 2007:

"China's former top drug regulator went on trial Wednesday accused of taking bribes to approve untested medicine, including an antibiotic that killed at least 10 patients last year before it was taken off the market. (Source is the China Digital Times)

Now the former Drug and Health Tzar of China has been sentenced to death. Why such a harsh sentance?

Well it turns out that his administration accepted more than just bribes to licence ineffective antibiotics.

BBC reports today as follows :Last month Zheng was accused of accepting more than 6.5m yuan ($850,000) in bribes to approve hundreds of drugs.

One company, Kongliyuan Group, allegedly paid him bribes in return for approving 277 drugs, mostly antibiotics.

Zheng's former secretary, Cao Wenzhuang, also faced trial accused of accepting bribes.

Thirty-one other people were also alleged to have been involved in the scandal, including Zheng's wife, Liu Naixue, and his son, Zheng Hairong.

Following Zheng's sacking, the Chinese government announced a review of about 170,000 medical licences that were awarded during his tenure at the agency.

Dozens of people have died in China because of poor quality or fake drugs.

Last year, a sub-standard antibiotic, Xinfu, which was not properly sterilised, led to the deaths of 11 people.

Thirteen babies died of malnutrition in 2005 after being fed powered milk that contained no nutritional value.

The Chinese government recently announced an urgent review of industry food standards amid increasing concern both at home and abroad.

A recent spate of cat and dog deaths in the US has been blamed on pet food ingredients, contaminated with melamine, exported from China.

US inspectors have also halted all shipments of toothpaste from China to investigate reports that they may be contaminated with toxic chemicals (read that as antifreeze, which is toxic to the nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract)." source

As far as we know Colgate and Crest are US made.

However, China is still the largest supplier of vitamins and food supplements in the world.

Here's the problem. We have the junk added into cereal, soft drinks everything!

I'm no expert in Chinese production quality control and I don't speak Chineses. However, I have a sense that there may be more to all this incompetence. We have to wait for the truth to come out, and it will. US MFRS must be scrambling to check where the hell the components come from and who signed what. This may be very limited, or not!

My advice, go organic for a while. If you have toothpaste you are not sure of, throw it out! If your are pregnant dont take any of this junk, just real fresh clean foods! Forget multivitamins until the FDA wakes up to test everything sourced from China. This is what happens when we outsource production to the lowest cost producers! Ineffective drugs, food laced with toxic materials and who knows what else!

This is the problem of the global workforce. One person pollutes the river, and everything downstream gets sick!

This is reality. We only have one set of iinternal organs! Got to look after them. Can't send 'em back to Canon Pro care!

Just thought you might want to know!

Asher

 

[janet Smith]

Hi Asher

Thank you for brirnging this to our attention, I'll definately be checking my toothpaste out! Just when you think that the deplorable acts of other human beings cannot plummet any further, they seem to find a new depth to sink to!

It's refreshing to find a place dedicated to helping each other, if only everywhere was the same....

 

[Ray West]

Hi Jan,

How, exactly, are you going to check out your toothpaste? How about the materials in the tube, or the plastic cap, or the pipes though which your water flows? ('permitted additives' - permitted by who, for what purpose?)

Just curious?

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[janet Smith]

Hi Ray

Clearly there is a limit to the checking you can do, but you can check where it was manufactured or possibly go to an alternative organic product, this will more than likely be the course of action I will take, having already done so with many food, cosmetic and haircare products, it's just another step, IMHO the fewer chemicals we use the better surely.....

 

[Asher Kelman]

Ray,

The sad thing is that they delivered the stuff we know about so far to South American countries. These are sold under different brand names. The real thing to do is to limit one's use of vitamin supplements and other non-essential processed stuff until there has been more testing. I have no doubt that this is being done by a whole bunch of govenment agencies and companies themselves.

Especially with pregnant women, I'd try to go organic for at lest the first 3 months. I'm not saying go nuts about it, just use some restraint until we know more.

We are so used to using processed products that we have forgotten that we ever managed before! Baking soda is perfectly fine for cleaning teeth. In fact, flossing and a then a plain tooth brush is probably just as good!

I didn't mean to make everyone go nuts, just to be a little more selective.

Asher

 

[Ray West]

Hi Asher,

But this happens with _everything_ that is 'mass produced'. Until the whole ethos of business is changed, it will get worse. wrt toothpaste, personally I'm lucky, I can just take 'em out and leave 'em to soak over night ;-)

Now, I expect the stuff wasn't simply delivered to South America, it was probably bought by a South American, and shipped over. there would be some chain established, probably cash up front. The word 'organic' is meaningless, it is normally used as an excuse to charge more for the same product. I've seen it on labels such as 'organic honey', for example.

I do not think it is only China's ex drug regulator that is corrupt. It's just that he will possibly be executed. It is a shame that all folk in such positions of responsibility do not have similar penalties if they strayed. If it were so, who would want to be the next president/prime minister/managing director, whoever? Until then, trust no-one, test everything.

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Asher,

But this happens with _everything_ that is 'mass produced'. Until the whole ethos of business is changed, it will get worse. wrt toothpaste, personally I'm lucky, I can just take 'em out and leave 'em to soak over night ;-) [/Quote]

I do that with my chewing gum. In the morning, there's not many ants on it at all, and anyway, most of them wash off!

The word 'organic' is meaningless, it is normally used as an excuse to charge more for the same product. I've seen it on labels such as 'organic honey', for example.

Well, to be truthful, if a beehive is natural so are jets we fly on! Both are manufactured!

By organic, I mean not baked at such a temp as corn to cornflakes becomes 2% or whatever, acrylamide polymers or we add a bunch of artifical colrs and flavors from China into everything we cook!!

I do not think it is only China's ex drug regulator that is corrupt. It's just that he will possibly be executed. It is a shame that all folk in such positions of responsibility do not have similar penalties if they strayed. If it were so, who would want to be the next president/prime minister/managing director, whoever? Until then, trust no-one, test everything.

Best wishes,

Ray

Well Ray,

The news is still fixated on this!

"Dozens of Chinese died during the period that the condemned official, Zheng Xiaoyu, reportedly approved untested medicines. And China has suffered significant loss of face overseas.

The nation's reputation as an export juggernaut recently has been tarnished by a pet food scandal in the United States, disclosures that exported toothpaste contained a chemical used in antifreeze and reports of Chinese medical ingredients being linked to deaths in Panama.

Beijing has responded by dispatching legions of factory inspectors and promising tougher oversight. On Tuesday, it announced its first recall system for unsafe food products as well as the death sentence for the 62-year-old former Source is the Los Angeles Times.

What's really bad is the harsh treatment meted out to whistle blowers. It seems one poor felloew was imprisoned for 8 months!

"Even as China has promised to redouble its efforts to tackle potentially life-threatening cases of bribery and malfeasance in the food and pharmaceutical industries, its record is not very good on protecting or even listening to whistle-blowers.

Last year, Zhang Zhijian, a former employee of the Kangliyuan Pharmaceutical Co. in China's southern island province of Hainan, reposted an essay on an Internet chat room that discussed the "unnatural relationship" between his company and regulators. He said he didn't know the original author when it was posted from his company computer.

Local authorities with strong ties to the company traced it to him, he said, and he was detained for almost eight months on charges of "damaging the company's reputation."

He was released only after Kangliyuan appeared on a list of companies from which Zheng had received bribes."

Asher

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

Interesting story Asher!

Industries with a perceived higher risk such as aviation and nuclear plants have a much better safety record than health care. There is a one in 1 000 000 chance of a traveller being harmed while in an aircraft. In comparison, there is a one in 300 chance of a patient being harmed during health care.

In some countries, the proportion of injections given with syringes or needles reused without sterilization is as high as 70%. This exposes millions of people to infections. Each year, unsafe injections cause 1.3 million deaths, primarily due to transmission of blood-borne pathogens such as hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and HIV. Source: WHO

Recently, I read it last week, the fatal PRRS, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, or "blue ear disease" better known in the US as "mystery swine disease" from the 80s, hit chinas porc production, which is cause for a national crisis in deed, as porc meat is one of the main nutritional sources in china, they consider to dig into the national reserve to regulate exploding prices that as a result also influenced chicken and egg prices. Outbreaks of foot and mouth were reported as well in the same artikel on the german magazine DER SPIEGEL.

I intend to think, China has become the biggest capitalist in this planet, and we witness the drastic implications their turn around has brought upon themselves and the rest of the world.

We live in times of inevitably declining ressources, hence the pressure on the remaining ressources is even higher, which btw. leads to higher risks of military conflicts in general in my view.

I think we arrived at a crossroad and have to make up our minds as to how we wish to procede. If the fact that we have to deal with declining ressources means that those in power increase the pressure even more and try to cream of what is possible, well, this is for sure a shortsighted strategy and serves no purpose on the long run, but I am afraid exactly this is happening.

 

[Ray West]

Hi Asher,

I know what you mean wrt organic, it is the same as what everyone means who buys the stuff, but the opposite of the folk who sell it. Much of these troubles stem from the 1920's or so, the advent of consumerism and fashion and mass production. or possibly before, when Constantine changed Rome, or maybe that first guy who sold a pot of fire for an elk skin.

Anyway -

Well, to be truthful, if a beehive is natural so are jets we fly on! Both are manufactured!

Bees make the honey - they have two stomachs - one for them, one for the colony. (they have five eyes too, 3 of them are uv sensitive.) They bring the nectar back, regurgitate it, pass it to others who pack it in the cells, add water as necessary, or leave to evaporate, maybe add pollen, then when it is just right, they cap off the wax cell with more wax. We then steal it. The only human processing should be collection and bottling. The uk 'domestic' bee can fly up to three miles to collect nectar and pollen - so there is no way that you can say the goods have been collected from plants that have not had chemical treatment. But, some outfits sell honey with 'organic' on the label, implying it is in some way better than other honey. The nature of the honey depends on the plants the nectar is collected from.

Now, of course, this perfectly wonderful natural product, is corrupted by business interests, on all fronts. The stuff you buy in the supermarket is 'blended', since consistency of product is required. It will be 'let down' with sugar and water, pasteurised and so on. Guess which country produces the most honey...?

Folk should eat more pure 'insect vomit'.

The method of bee keeping, and our understanding of 'how they work' has changed over the years, since Virgil, and years before. It has a number of medical uses, antibiotic, etc.

Now get rid of the jet planes, the world would stand a chance, but get rid of the bees, we'd probably all die.

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Asher,
Anyway - Bees make the honey - they have two stomachs - one for them, one for the colony. (they have five eyes too, 3 of them are uv sensitive.) They bring the nectar back, regurgitate it, pass it to others who pack it in the cells, add water as necessary, or leave to evaporate, maybe add pollen, then when it is just right, they cap off the wax cell with more wax. We then steal it...............
Folk should eat more pure 'insect vomit'.............

Now get rid of the jet planes, the world would stand a chance, but get rid of the bees, we'd probably all die.

Breautiful description of the ants regurgitation system! You are very knowledgable and seem to have a fetish for all the marvelous minutiae once can ask for!

Also the necessity for bees is a current issue as bee hives in the USA are dying off!! So the prices for renting them as pollinators are increasing.

Without bees, forget your favorite cherries, apples and pears and so much more. Only a few things like Dandelions can reproduce parthogentically. IOW, the male gamete is sort of uneeded!

Back to the poisons, as you point out, the bees take in whatever nectar they find. Maybe they have a preference, but I don't know that they can detect tainted nectar from over-spraying. It never occured to me to look for this crap in honey!!!

This is looking more like a causus belli!

Asher

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

An interesting map.

China plans to build several thousand kilometres of canals, carrying ten of billions of cubic metres of water from the rivers of the south to the thirsty north. This disturbance of hydrological regimes, on top of increasing extractions for irrigation, will drastically disrupt ecosystems. In time, some rivers may no longer reach the sea.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Bear,

Where did you find this impressive map? Where is China now?

Asher

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

I came across this map in "le monde diplomatique", here is the english version: http://mondediplo.com/

This map in particular under maps/environment/China's thirsty north: http://mondediplo.com/maps/

The publication is a spin of from the french Le Monde from 1954, independant from Le Monde since 1996, originally founded to supply background informations to diplomats in Africa and Asia. Today they have globally 61 editions (31 online and 30 print). The global print circulation is 700.000. Russia, China, Japan and Brazil offer website editions only. Print editions are published in Arab Emirates, Argentina, Bolivia, England, France, Germany, Greece, Luxemburg, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Serbia, Spain. The editorials are country specific.

Their "ATLAS DER GLOBALISIERUNG 2007" is most comprehensive, unfortunately only available in german at the moment afaik.

It is a leftist publication with excellent background research and particular focus on issues of Globalisation, they are known for their extensive use of maps to explain current tendencies.

French Edition: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/

China today looks like this, last updated on 31 May, 2007, courtesy of CIA: