REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Patient dies when surgical team flees

Workers clean a building at Shanghai's Baogang Hospital on Friday after an operation room inside caught fire on Wednesday, killing a patient who was undergoing an amputation surgery. Provided to China Daily

SHANGHAI - Six medical staff members who fled during a fire, leaving a patient who was undergoing surgery to suffocate in thick smoke, have been suspended and placed under investigation, the hospital said.

On Wednesday, a fire broke out around 9:45 pm in an operating room at Baogang Hospital in Shanghai, where a 49-year-old patient surnamed Zhu was undergoing an amputation surgery after a traffic accident. Two doctors, two anaesthesiologists and two nurses fled. The patient was under general anesthesia and suffocated.

The hospital said it would be dangerous to move the patient, who had just undergone the amputation and was still bleeding profusely. Moreover, the fire had caused a power outage that disabled the electric lock on the operating table.

Fang Yong, president of Baogang Hospital, said the fire started with an ozone sterilizer in one of the operating rooms.

"Power supplies were cut off, and an emergency system was turned on to keep the patient's breathing machine running," said Fang. He said when the power cut off, the breathing machine could remain working for only 30 minutes.

"Under the circumstances, the doctors decided not to transfer the patient, but to leave and find firefighters to rescue the patient," he said.

Fang conceded that the medical workers misjudged the severity of the fire. He said firefighters arrived about five minutes after the fire began and took 30 minutes to extinguish the flames.

Zhu's nephew, surnamed Jin, said he entered the hospital after the fire was extinguished. "Firefighters were cleaning up the scene and I saw my uncle's body on the ground, covered with a white cloth."

Read more at ChinaDaily.com

Are Executed Prisoners' Organs Still Being Harvested in China?

Transplant tourism is one of those dangerous businesses that proliferate in many developing-world countries. The intersection of rich foreigner frantic for a kidney, cornea or liver and poor local desperate to make money has spawned an illicit organ-trafficking industry, from India to Brazil. China, which is the subject of a new article in the respected medical journal The Lancet, is no exception:

China is attempting to move towards a more ethical, voluntary organ donation system that can service the nation's growing needs, but… that is proving easier said than done… In China, as in nearly all other countries, the number of patients in need of transplants far exceeds the number of organs available. China is unique, however, in trying to make up this imbalance by harvesting organs from the prisoners it executes, a policy fiercely criticised by foreign transplant specialists and human-rights advocates. “There is absolutely no excuse to be sourcing organs from prisoners in a system in which due legal process and the right of informed consent are by any means questionable”, says Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch, “and in China they are highly questionable and highly unreliable.”

In 2007, in order to crack down on what appeared to be a growing trade in Chinese organs harvested for foreigners willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars, Beijing banned living organ donors, apart from family members or others who were “emotionally connected” to the needy patient. The regulations  prohibited the organs of executed prisoners from going to anyone but their relatives. China's tough laws were viewed as commendable.

But since then it's not clear whether the regulations have been strictly enforced. Indeed, if a 2009 article in the state-run China Daily is to be believed, more than 65% of organs transplanted in China at that time came from executed prisoners. Back in 2006, the Chinese Health Ministry said that “very few” transplants conducted in China used the organs of executed inmates. But around that time I reported on a broker called Bek-Medical, which was based in Japan and advertised “fast, cheap and safe” transplants for Japanese patients who were willing to travel to China. One of the broker's staffers told TIME that the company organized 30 to 50 operations a year. The source for all the kidneys and livers? “Executed prisoners,” said the Bek-Medical employee.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/06/07/are-executed-prisoners-organs-still-being-harvested-in-china/#ixzz1ObFRassT

Chinese Organ Donation Plans Slammed

China's plan to tackle the nation's organ transplant demands by encouraging new drivers to become donors is getting mixed reviews.

As Reuters is reporting, a shortage of organs has driven a trade in illegal organ trafficking in the country. But by the end of 2011, Chinese people will be given the option of registering as organ donors when they apply for driving licenses, and the nation is also considering financial incentives to encourage people to voluntarily donate organs in an effort to build a nationwide voluntary organ donation system.

"The move is to streamline the donor registration system so as to expand the pool of organs available for transplant surgeries,"

Read more at Huffington Post

132-Pound Toddler In China Gains Weight Inexplicably

A toddler that weighs 132 pounds? It's true. Lu Hao, a 3-year-old boy from China, weighs five times the size of a normal child his age, Britain's The Sun reports.

Incidentally, Lu Hao was born underweight, at 5.7 pounds. And while doctors are baffled by the toddler's insatiable hunger and rapid weight gain, they suspect his low birthweight might have something to do with it.

Lu Hao's parents have attempted to curb their child's diet and encourage physical activity. But such attempts have been rebuked by the 3-year-old, who prefers to ride on his mother's motorcycle rather than walk to kindergarten and throws temper tantrums when his parents attempt to lighten his food intake.

Lu Hao's father, Lu Yuncheng, told The Sun that the toddler can eat three big bowls of rice at a sitting and "cries nonstop" if denied what he wants.

Read more at the Huffington Post

Raffles Medical's China plans

SINGAPORE health-care services firm Raffles Medical is prepared to invest S$200 million to S$300 million to build a hospital in China, to tap into the growing medical needs of the world's most populous nation, its chairman said.

Raffles, which has already opened a medical centre in Shanghai, may set up a general hospital with a few areas of excellence - such as cancer treatment, cardiology and fertility - in a "gateway city" like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen or Guangzhou.

"We are looking for possibilities - site, permission - to invest in an international hospital in China with at least 300 beds," chairman Loo Choon Yong told Reuters in an interview.

Dr Loo said Raffles may enter a joint venture or make its own investment with a mix of internal cash, debt and equity, but he qualified that it must be economically feasible for the firm. He added that it may take around three years to build a hospital from the time the firm finds a suitable plot of land in China, and it may recruit 100 to 200 doctors, who will be a mix of Singaporeans, Chinese and other nationalities.

Back home in Singapore, Raffles aims to invest around S$12.5 million to increase its number of general-practice, dental and specialist clinics to 100, from the current 75, in the next three years using the firm's internal resources, said Dr Loo. By 2013, Raffles aims to complete the expansion of Raffles Hospital, the group's flagship, adding 102,408 sq ft of space that will boost the current floor area by one third, Dr Loo said.

Read more at asiaone news

'World News' Gets Answers on China: Health Care

China has stunned the world with its rapid economic growth in recent years, showcased through the glittering skyline of Shanghai and the global events like the 2008 Olympics. But while the country has amassed tremendous wealth, China still trails the developed world in its ability to provide even basic health care for its people.

With its massive 1.3 billion population, China's health care expenditures are miniscule compared to Western nations.

China spent less than 5 percent of its GDP on health care in 2005, compared to roughly 16 percent spent in the United States and 10 percent in Canada, according to the World Health Organization.

"The amount of government spending on health care is really low. It's less than $10 per person, per year," said Drew Thompson, director of China studies and Starr senior fellow at the Nixon Center.

Per person expenditures in the U.S. have topped $6,000 in recent years.

Despite China's Communist government, health care remains largely the responsibility of individuals. Out-of-pocket expenses are extremely high in comparison to average earnings. A single hospital visit nearly matches China's annual income per capita.

 Health Insurance Not Mandated

Health insurance is not mandated, though the government does have health insurance programs that provide coverage to some 90 percent of the population. The programs include an employer-based system, a program for urban residents, and another program covering the rural population. For the most part, the programs do not cover the basic care.

Read more at ABC News

Kickbacks in China's Hospitals: An Institutional Flaw

Hospitals in China rely heavily on drug selling to continue their operation, giving doctors a chance to make illegal money. Pictured: A comic satirizing the kickback problem in China's medical industry. (Photo/Xinhua)

China's Ministry of Health has vowed to tackle bribery in hospitals after news of a scandal involving dozens of doctors in eastern China broke early this week.

The news emerged in a list published on social networking website 19lao on Nov. 15, accusing doctors at several hospitals in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, of taking bribes from a pharmaceutical company.

The list explicitly detailed the name and price of drugs, medical equipment, and the names of medical staff involved in the kickbacks. These staff received payoffs in cash, oil cards, digital cameras and shopping cards.

According to the official People's Daily, an unnamed official at the Ministry of Health said those found to have accepted bribes would face suspension from work or having their medical licenses revoked in serious cases.

Bribery is a common problem in the medical industry in China. Some pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies pay kickbacks to doctors and hospital staff to boost their sales. The cases in Hangzhou are typical.

A poll conducted by People's Daily Online asked the public why they thought corruption was present in hospitals. Among 9,647 online voters, 49% of them said it was because punishments for corruption are not harsh enough; 33% said doctors are not reasonably treated and cannot reach a balance between duty and reward; and 15% said receiving kickbacks is a hidden rule in the business.

Read more at  Want China Times

Freudians Put China on the Couch

BEIJING — More than 500 Chinese and foreigners packed “Freud and Asia,” the 100th anniversary meeting of the International Psychoanalytical Association here last week, reflecting growing interest in psychoanalysis in a country some say is suffering high levels of repressed trauma — and ripe for change.

For decades after the 1949 revolution, the Communist Party banned psychoanalysis as bourgeois superstition. Sports and revolution ardor were recommended for mental health. Only in the past 20 years has analysis been permitted, at first grudgingly, now relatively freely. But, “It’s still not easy,” said Chen Aiguo, a self-taught counselor in the central city of Zhengzhou.

Violent political campaigns that killed tens of millions in the past, and tight controls over freedom of expression that persist to this day, have left a significant legacy of trauma, say Chinese and foreign analysts. This affects not just those who experienced painful events but also children who inherit their parents’ unresolved mourning, the association’s former president, Cláudio Eizirik, said on the eve of the event, the first time the influential association, founded by Sigmund Freud in 1910, had met in Asia.

“I think the Chinese in this respect resemble the Holocaust survivors and the children of Holocaust survivors,” said Elise Snyder, an American psychoanalyst. “It’s astonishing how much they have been through.”

Read more at The New York Times

Black Death may have originated in China

The first outbreak of plague originated in China more than 2,600 years ago, before spreading to Europe and Africa thanks in part to the inspiration for Sinbad the Sailor, new research has suggested.

                    People praying for relief from the bubonic plague Photo: GETTY

An international team of scientists, led by Dr Mark Achtman of University College Cork, studied 17 strains of Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, from sites around the world.

They then used their data to draw up a common family tree, showing how the different strains had mutated, over time, from a common root. The tree shows a branch of the disease splitting off about 728 years ago, around the time the Black Death struck.

The Black Death was the middle of three great waves of plague. The first strain appeared in the sixth century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. That plague is thought by historians to have peaked in the 14th century and killed up to a third of the population of Europe.

The third wave of plague began in China in the late 19th century, spreading along shipping lines from Hong Kong and hitting San Francisco in 1900.

Read more at the Telegraph

                   

China's Bear Bile Industry Slowly Dying

CHENGDU, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- In a tranquil patch of woods in Chengdu, southwest China, 107 bears rest after a life of agony and incarceration.

The special cemetery of the Moon Bear Rescue Center, built by Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) in Sichuan Province, is for bears once farmed for their bile.

Three freed bears from a Shandong bear-bile farm were recently buried here after their rehabilitation at the center failed.

Liver cancers and organ failures, a result of years of painful bile extraction, finally claimed them, said Wang Fan, bear carer with the center.

The practice of extracting bear bile can be traced back to ancient times when people first started consuming the bile, which allegedly has curative effects for ailments such as eye and liver problems.

For over 3,000 years bears have been hunted in Asian countries for their gallbladders and the valuable bile within. Only in the 1980s, after rampant hunting greatly reduced their numbers, did countries like China and the Republic of Korea take steps to ban bear hunting.

But wild bears were then caught and farmed for their bile.

By the end of 2009, bear farming was still legal in 13 of Chinese mainland's 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, and bear-bile products can still be seen across China.

In Chengdu, bear-bile powder can sell for as high as 4,000 yuan (598 U.S. dollars) a kilogram. Some high-end alcohol and shampoo products also list bear bile as an ingredient.

Read more at XINHUANET

Beyond Animal Rights, the Antibiotics Battle

I’ve reported in Iraq and Afghanistan and walked through a SARS ward in China at the height of that deadly epidemic. But my scariest moment as a reporter came this summer, when I visited an egg farm in Ohio to write about the debate over factory farming and animal confinement. I’m dangerously allergic to feathers, and I had to will myself (aided by a Benadryl) to walk into a barn filled with 168,000 hens.

Brian C. Frank for The New York Times Pigs near Ralston, Iowa, are given antibiotics in their feed. The blue spot indicates they are ready for market.

As it turned out, I was astonished at how well the ventilation system worked to keep the air clear; I didn’t suffer more than some sniffles. That was just one of the impressive features of an operation that yielded millions of eggs every day. If only it didn’t also involve cramming all those birds for life into tiers of cages — an efficient production method that has brought the wrath of animal rights activists and, in several states, new restrictions on caging.

Then last month I toured a large pork farm in Iowa while reporting on the feeding of antibiotics to healthy animals, which health officials want to curb because it breeds drug-resistant bacteria that threaten humans. I don’t think I’m particularly allergic to pigs — although, since I haven’t had to cope with pillows and jackets stuffed with pig down, how would I know? But I was astonished by the absence of foul smells. Living on slatted floors that let the manure fall through, the pigs, for better or worse, never wallow in mud or garbage

Read more at The New York Times

Deadly way of silencing AIDS activists

IF life with HIV/AIDS were not challenging enough, the Chinese government seems determined to make it harder by suppressing claims for compensation.

When Tian Xi was nine years old he contracted HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion at Xincai Country No 1 People's Hospital in central China's Henan Province.

He is now 23 and since his late teens he has taken up his family's call for compensation for himself and others similarly affected.

On August 6 he was detained by police in Xincai County without his medication or any money, and later arrested. He was taken to the hospital for treatment on August 16 and taken into criminal detention on August 19; his parents were told two days later.

Mr Tian also has the debilitating liver virus hepatitis B and its more deadly cousin hepatitis C.

His mother and aunt went to the police station and asked to see him on August 21, but they were turned away. They were only able to send some clothes in to the pre-trial detention centre.

"Dong, the police officer in charge of my son's case, didn't tell us what is happening to him, only told us that he is 'safe'," Mr Tian's father, Tian Demin, told The Weekend Australian.

"My wife gave Dong 100 yuan last week and asked him to give it to Tian Xi to buy some food, for he needs nutrition, but Dong returned the money when he came back from the detention centre.

"The authorities have issued a notification of arrest and said they will sentence him."

Mr Tian Jr was already a target for authorities. He had previously been detained in Beijing, thrown into a "black jail" -- shadowy detention centres run by local governments for those who come from the country to the capital to petition the central government.

On July 9 the local county government issued a statement about him. "Tian Xi has a complicated background, and his thinking and behaviours are deeply affected by (exiled activist) Wan Yanhai," the statement read.

"He went to Beijing twice recently to make illegal petitions and brought great inconvenience to the local government's supervision of him.

Read more at The Australian

China Grants Samplify Second Series of Patents for Medical Imaging Technologies

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Samplify Systems, Inc., a leading provider of signal-compression technology, semiconductors, and solutions, today announced that the Chinese Government has granted the company its second series of technology patents for medical imaging applications.  These new patents come on the heels of the first series of patents that were granted earlier this month for wireless base station compression.  More specific, China utility model patents were granted by the China State Intellectual Property Office covering the use of compressing and storing x-ray projection data in Computed Tomography (CT) systems.  CT projection data is generated when x-rays are digitized and are transferred, stored, and processed by CT image reconstruction computers.  Samplify's patented compression technology reduces CT projection data bandwidth and storage requirements by a factor of four.  These patents include:

With the granting of this second series of patents in China, Samplify's Prism CT compression technology is now protected in a market and region that is strategically important for the company.  Indeed, Samplify continues to make inroads with the leading medical system companies in China.  As important, these OEMs continue to leverage China's significant stimulus funding of $125B, part of which will be used for the deployment of next-generation CT equipment.  Samplify's innovative compression technology for medical applications saves medical imaging OEMs significant design, development, and manufacturing costs for the transport and storage of CT projection signals from the x-ray detectors on the rotating gantry to the image reconstruction workstation.

According to Al Wegener, Samplify CTO and founder, "Medical equipment OEMs who are developing new, lower-cost CT systems, are challenged to transport and store huge amounts of digital data in real time.  Samplify's Prism CT compression technology offers these OEMs an innovative way to reduce these transfer and storage bottlenecks in a cost-effective manner. No other solution can match Samplify's low complexity and low-cost solutions while operating at compression rates greater than 200 Msps."

"Today's announcement is another example of the Chinese government's willingness to open up its markets to foreign corporations in an effort to gain access to the best technologies and intellectual property for its own corporate base," says Tom Sparkman, Samplify CEO.   "We are very pleased," he added, "that we are able to make inroads with Chinese OEMs using our technology in such a protected fashion."

Read more at PR NewsWire

Experts find gene variants for stomach, gullet cancer

Aug 23 (Reuters) - Scientists have identified genetic mutations that appear to be associated with both esophageal and stomach cancer in two studies in China, suggesting they may share similar triggers.

This finding adds to the understanding of how these cancers develop and may help in the hunt for cures.

In the first study, Chinese researchers analysed genes of 9,053 patients with esophageal cancer and 2,766 with stomach cancer. The research also included a smaller number of esophageal cancer patients of Uighur-Kazakh descent.

Two mutations -- PLCE1 at location 10q23 and C20orf54 at location 20p13 -- showed up consistently in all these patients, the researchers wrote in a paper published in Nature Genetics on Monday.

"These results show that genetic variations at 10q23 and 20p13 contribute significantly to risk for esophageal cancer and (stomach) cancer in Chinese Han and Uighur-Kazakh populations," wrote the researchers, led by Wang Lidong at the Xinxiang Medical University in China's central Henan province.

China bears roughly half of the world's burden of these two cancers. Stomach cancer, the number-two killer after lung cancer, kills 803,000 people around the world each year, while esophageal cancer kills 400,000.

Read more at REUTERS

China, US open disease study center in Shanghai

SHANGHAI — American and Shanghai health authorities opened an epidemiology center in the Chinese city Tuesday to train experts in sleuthing out ways to prevent chronic and epidemic diseases.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping with training and technical assistance at the center that will be "driven by what are the major public health issues in this country," said CDC deputy director Stephen B. Thacker.

"We need more field epidemiologists in China and around the world and we need them better trained," Thacker told The Associated Press.

Outbreaks of SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome) and bird flu since 2003, and last year's swine flu epidemic have driven home the rising risks from new diseases or deadly mutations of epidemic ailments, especially in developing countries that may lack the infrastructure to cope with them before they get out of hand.

Earlier joint research in field epidemiology helped identify routes of infection for some of those ailments.

Read more at Google News

At Russia-China Border, Bear Paws Sell Best

BLAGOVESCHENSK, Russia — It was a routine arrest, warranting only a brief mention in the local newspaper, Amur Pravda. Customs agents, suspicious of a woman’s bulky clothing, discovered she had tape wrapped around her torso.

The New York Times

An illicit trade in animal parts has begun in Blagoveschensk.

Removing it, they found the contraband: several large, furry bear paws.

Closed for decades, the border between Russia and China has been creaking open in recent years, allowing more trade and travel but also clearing the way for a peculiar cross-border criminal enterprise in animal parts for Chinese medicine and cooking.

“It is very widespread just now,” Aleksei L. Vaisman, a senior coordinator for Traffic Europe-Russia, a group sponsored by WWF that monitors trade in wild animals, said of the illicit trade in animal parts in the Far East.

Not only bear paws but also bear gallbladders — highly valued for their medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities — frogs, tiger bones, deer musk and the genitals of spotted deer are smuggled daily into China.

But it is bear paws, a ritual dish for the Chinese, that are the most common commodities in this underground market, Mr. Vaisman said. He estimated that thousands were smuggled each year.

While illegal and, to most people perhaps, offensive, the traffic apparently poses no threat to the robust Siberian population of Russian brown bears, a relative of grizzlies, which is rising despite the paw trade.

Read more at The New York Times

Renhuang to Launch New All-Natural Anti-depressant and Nerve Regulation Product - Compound Schisandra Tablets

HARBIN, China, June 22, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Renhuang Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Pink Sheets: RHGP) ("Renhuang" or the "Company"), a developer, manufacturer and distributor of botanical products, bio-pharmaceuticals and traditional Chinese medicines ("TCM"), today announced that the Company plans to launch its new all-natural anti-depressant and nerve regulation product - Compound Schisandra Tablets ("Schisandra Tablets"), a single plant based medicine, in July 2010. Renhuang estimates that Schisandra Tablets will generate revenues of RMB 3.0 million (approximately $44,000) in fiscal year 2010.

Schisandra, also known as magnolia vine, has been clinically proven to have significant benefits to the functioning and regulation of the central nervous system and for upper body respiration. According to China Pharmacopoeia, Schisandra is used as a remedy for many ailments, such as: to generate body fluids and alleviate thirst, nourish the kidneys, cure insomnia and palpitations, and is also widely used as treatment for neurasthenia (a term most commonly used in Traditional Chinese medicine to denote a complex of symptoms characterized by chronic fatigue and weakness, loss of memory, and generalized aches and pains).

"Compound Schisandra Tablets are an exciting new plant-based anti-depressant and nerve regulation product, which complements our existing product portfolio, provides additional revenue generation opportunities and strengthens our leading market position in this important and rapidly growing market segment," commented Mr. Shaoming Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Renhuang. "We plan to extensively promote this new product to instill strong market acceptance amongst our target audience. We expect Schisandra will generate RMB 10.0 million (approximately $1.5 million) in revenue in fiscal year 2011."

Read more at MarketWatch

Our Dangerous Planet

During the 1970s, international aid agencies came up with a brilliant plan to stem a plague of water-borne illnesses in the Asian country of Bangladesh. They would underwrite the installation of wells in disease-troubled villages, tapping into the cleaner ground water below.

They would use simple, relatively inexpensive tube wells, place thousands of these over-sized drinking straws into the shallow aquifers. And these straws - millions of them - would suck up the cleaner, microorganism free water in healthy abundance.

At first, it seemed to work like a blessing. Infant mortality rates dropped by 50 percent as the rate of dysentery, typhoid and chlolera dropped. But by the mid-1990s, a strange epidemic of other illnesses began to appear - some symptoms rather like cholera (lethargy, severe stomach pain, nausea and diarrhea), but others wickedly their own: such as a roughening and darkening of skin, a corrosion appearance of lesions on hands and feet:

In fact, as a team of increasingly angry researchers from adjacent India concluded in 1995: classic symptoms of arsenic poisoning.

Read more at Speakeasy Science

The Marginalized Second Generation Peasants

Translation of a commentary in Southern Metropolis Daily titled “The Second-Generation Peasants Living an Ostracized Life”.

ALICE POON
Here is my translation of the commentary:- 

“Human beings are the subjects of a development process. Development policies should aim at transforming each individual into a major participant and beneficiary of the process and should not result in creating marginalized and victimized groups.

 

At the inauguration ceremony of the recent Shenzhen National People’s Congress meeting, government officials and enterprise management personnel had a chance to reflect on this issue. Xu Xiaowen, president of the Chang Yuan Group, said that it is necessary to change the present situation where factory workers are treated like ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’, and to increase after-work recreational activities for the workers.

 

In the author’s view, this is a depiction of the same old marginalized way of life for the second-generation peasant workers. Presently, the second-generation peasants are still ostracized from the urban social security system. They have long been in a precarious position in many aspects like living standards, job opportunities and medical benefits etc. Such precarious position is bound to force them to live spiritually isolated lives from society, and is the cause for their marginalized existence. The second-generation peasants live in isolation, far away from urban dwellers, from normal city life. They are unable to have normal family lives. They are like a bunch of ‘Robinson Crusoes and Fridays’ who have been stranded on a remote island and who live like castaways.

 

Hidden behind the saying ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ are two horrible revelations. One is that the second-generation peasants are doomed to the destiny of the first generation and from this phenomenon one can perceive the seriousness of social class stratification. The second-generation peasants are excluded from the city’s systems. Although they live within a city, their identities are not recognized by urban society, thus making them neither villagers nor city dwellers and landing them in an awkward position. This gives another marginalized quality to their existence.

 

The second revelation is that the hereditary gene rooted within the psyches of the marginalized group can lead to a strengthening and inflation of the feelings of deprivation. On the surface, the second-generation peasants have accepted the city way of life, but the city has not extended them an official reception, as the city does not count them in in its policy-making. It has thus caused antagonism in the marginalized group towards the city government. On this second-generation peasant issue, inequalities in the economic, cultural and social aspects are most prominent, as is the contradiction between the city’s acceptance of this group’s economic contribution and its non-acceptance of the group’s social status in the city.

 

The saying ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ fully reflects the fact that the second-generation peasants’ development right is being ignored. Human beings are the subjects of development process, and development policies should transform each individual into a participant and beneficiary of that process, and should not result in creating marginalized and victimized groups. Hence, ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ is as well a matter of rights. It is only on this ground that one can see clearly the allegory of marginalization. Only from this standpoint can one contemplate the problem of how best to protect the young lives of the second-generation peasants.”

Asia Sentinel

With U.S. stem cell treatments limited, patients try other countries

BEIJING -- Disillusioned by U.S. doctors who could not help their daughter with cerebral palsy, Kara Anderson's parents did something they could not have imagined a few years ago: They took her to China.

Specialists in the Chicago area, where the family lives, said that Kara's brain injury was permanent and that the 9-year-old would probably end up in a wheelchair because of severe twisting in her leg muscles. But then her parents heard stories about children who had improved after receiving injections of stem cells.

The treatment was not available in the United States. It was only commercially available abroad.

That's how the Andersons joined the desperate people who are taking leaps of faith in seeking stem cell treatments in places as far away as China, India, Russia and Brazil.

Western scientists worry that patients are being taken in by slick marketing campaigns, wasting time, money and hope on unproven therapies, and perhaps even putting themselves in danger.

"Unregulated therapy in the absence of any evidence that these cells are going to help patients is reckless. The potential to do harm is enormous," said Arnold Kreigstein, a neurologist who is director of stem cell research at the University of California at San Francisco.

Scientists hope various kinds of stem cells can eventually be used to treat devastating and common ailments: heart attack, stroke, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, liver failure, even blindness. For now, there is scant evidence for the benefits of treatments such as the ones the Andersons sought.

Most of the stem cells used in Chinese clinics are obtained from fetuses from miscarriages. They thus fall somewhere between embryonic stem cells, which come from early-stage embryos -- raising ethical and religious questions about their use -- and adult stem cells, which are easier to obtain and are considered safer and less controversial.

They are widely considered to be less versatile than embryonic stem cells, which can develop into almost every kind of cell in the body, but more so than adult stem cells, which are useful only to treat the tissues or organs from which they came.

Read more at The Washington Post

Dolphin Therapy Helps Autistic Children in China

 

Dolphin attractions at Ocean Worlds are a common sight.

But at this one in China, Flipper has his Ph.D.

Dolphins here are trained to help over 100 children suffering from Autism and other neurological disorders.

It's thought the therapy improves their speech and motor skills. 

Parents say they see improvement and are eager to pay about 17 dollars for a 20-minute session.

[Parent of Autistic Child]: 

 "We have been using the dolphin therapy for almost a year. Although my child's progress is slow, there is an obvious improvement. We have seen a real difference since she has come here to listen to the dolphins squeaking. Since she started the treatment, she can focus her attention longer and is not as quiet as before."

It's that squeaking which is key in the treatment, says the park.

They claim the dolphin's high-frequency ultrasonic waves of 2000 to 100,000 HZ stimulate people's nervous systems – arousing dormant cells.

More parks like this are sprouting up around China as the treatment becomes more popular.

But it's still relatively new, as the country only officially recognized autism as a disability 4 years ago.

New Tang Dynasty Television

Blood Money: Why Blood Transfusions Are So Dirty in China

During the 1980s, in the United States, Canada, Japan and France thousands of people who underwent blood transfusions were infected with the HIV/AIDS virus. Subsequent national investigations into these scandals revealed that blood collection agencies were under-regulated and ripe with corruption. After approximately five years, increases in government oversight of these agencies and improved blood collection processes eliminated HIV/AIDS contaminated blood stores in these countries.

China’s tainted blood supply problem has proved harder to tame. It’s first tainted blood scandals occurred in the mid-1990s, and just last week Zhao Minggang, a top official at China’s Ministry of Health warned that blood transfusions are still dangerous in China and should be avoided whenever possible.

Read more at Asia Healthcare Blog

China's longest-surviving heart transplant recipient celebrates 18 years "rebirth"

HARBIN, April 26 (Xinhua) -- China's longest-surviving heart-transplant recipient celebrated 18 years with his new heart Monday.

"I was lucky. The transplant was my rebirth," said Yang Yumin, the 51-year-old heart-transplant recipient.

The celebration took place at the No. 2 Clinical Hospital attached to Harbin University of Medical Science in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, where doctors performed the operation 18 years ago.

Yang, a farmer from the suburbs of Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang, contracted ectatic myocarditis in 1989. Before the transplant, he could neither walk, sit nor lie down, and was at constant risk of heart failure.

Xia Qiuming, a famous cardiac surgeon, performed the transplant on April 26, 1992, with the heart of a brain-dead 23-year-old.

Yang even survived a motorcycle-car collision in 2000, with heart beat returning to normal within weeks of the accident.

Yang has a 17-year-old daughter and he runs a small fast-food restaurant at the hospital.

More than 800 people had received heart transplants in China by 2009, 31 years after the first such operation was performed in Shanghai in 1978.

XINHUA

Nigeria: China to Build 150-Bed in Abuja Hospital

China is to build 150-bed hospital at Lugbe, Abuja, under its health-related technical assistance programme in Nigeria, according to an official of the National Planning Commission.

The official, who pleaded anonymity, said last week in Abuja, that the hospital, when completed, would replace the existing Federal Staff Hospital currently operating in a rented apartment.

"The contract agreement has been signed between the Federal Ministry of Health and the Chinese engineering company that will handle the project.

Read more at allAfrica

MIMA’s Ting Teaches Quality Assurance In China

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Dr. Joseph Ting (pictured above wearing necktie), Chief Physicist at the MIMA Cancer Center, traveled to China to teach a series of Linear Accelerator quality assurance classes to multiple groups of Chinese Medical Physicists.  His third trip to China, Dr. Ting is one of two American physicists chosen as faculty members for these quarterly classes.

Cancer has already overtaken heart disease as the number one killer in the U.S., and  China is rapidly seeing a rise in cancer incidence but access to modern radiation oncology facilities remains limited.

The delivery of therapeutic doses of radiation uses complex devices called Linear Accelerators (or Linacs) that require rigorous quality assurance to verify that the machines are calibrated accurately.

The primary role of a Medical Physicist is to work with clinicians to develop safe and effective delivery of radiation treatments to cancer patients.

This effort will enhance the safe delivery of radiation treatments in China but, more importantly, it will provide a forum for exchanging ideas about patient safety and accurate delivery of radiation treatments.

Read more at Medicine.com