Another doubt about China

Charleston Daily Mail
November 2, 2007

CHINA's economy developed more rapidly than its regulatory infrastructure, and the Chinese have found themselves on the defensive in one scandal after another.
They now seem to understand they have a problem, and are prickly about criticism, but China is a big place. Getting regulations into place and then policing compliance are not easy tasks.

Forget lead paint on children's toys for a minute. Think about pharmaceuticals, as three reporters for the New York Times did, with harrowing results.

China has an increasing but difficult-to-trace presence in the pharmaceutical world. In January, at the world's largest trade show for pharmaceutical ingredients, almost 500 Chinese exhibitors trolled for business.

But many of those companies are not certified by the Chinese government to make pharmaceuticals, and therein lies the hazard.

"Pharmaceutical companies are regulated by the {Chinese} food and drug agency," wrote Walt Bogdanich of the Times. "Chemical companies that make products as varied as fertilizer and industrial solvents are overseen by other agencies. The problem arises when chemical companies cross over into drug ingredients."

That "problem" can be deadly.

In the mid 1990s, a Chinese government-owned trading company exported a poison -- diethylene glycol -- manufactured by an uncertified company and mislabeled as a drug ingredient. It resulted in the deaths of almost 100 children in Haiti.

A decade later, it happened again. Another state-owned trading company exported the same poison, again made by an uncertified chemical company. It wound up in a cold medicine that killed and injured 138 people in Panama.

Both exporters were represented at the trade show in Milan.

The president of another chemical company that planned to be there couldn't make it. He was in jail in Houston on charges of selling counterfeit medicine for schizophrenia, prostate cancer, blood clots and Alzheimer's disease, to name a few.

"Pharmaceutical ingredients can pass through three or four trading companies, none of which check their quality," wrote Bogdanich. "The ultimate manufacturer may not realize the ingredients came from an uncertified chemical company."

The Times' headlines its story, "Chinese Chemicals Flow Unchecked Onto World Drug Market."

In a world where consumers are increasingly forced to use generic drugs, that's a worry.

http://www.dailymail.com/story/Opinion/2007110215/Another-doubt-about-China/