Maybe everything from China is cheaper because they use deadly counterfeit ingredients. As some are now suggesting on the internet, let’s have the Chinese make our nuclear weapons, too, if it’s such a great bargain and China is such a great friend.
FDA identifies contaminant in blood thinner
The substance wouldn’t have occurred naturally in the heparin from China, the agency says, suggesting a counterfeit drug could be involved. The import may have led to the deaths of up to 19 in the U.S.
The Food and Drug Administration said today it has identified a mystery ingredient that contaminated a type of blood thinner imported from China that could have led to as many as 19 U.S. deaths and hundreds of severe allergic reactions among frail patients.
FDA Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock said the contaminant would not have occurred naturally in the many steps involved in processing the blood thinner heparin. That raised the possibility that a counterfeit drug could ultimately be blamed in the case.
“At this moment, we don’t know whether it was introduced intentionally or by accident,” she said. Officials stopped short of saying they suspected the heparin to be counterfeit, but they clearly indicated they were investigating that possibility.
Gee, like when the Chinese laced toothpaste and cough syrup with antifreeze? And the time they sent melamine for use as a pet food ingredient? Like those other possibilities of counterfeit ingredients?
This Olympics is shaping up to be a pivotal event, and not in the way the PRC wants. Crisis, catastrophe…remember that China historically has swung wildly between brutal centralization and violent disintegration. But one thing the Chinese have never understood is the rest of the world. They have always believed, and continue to believe, that despite long periods of relative isolation they are LITERALLLY the Middle Kingdom, the center of the universe around which all else revolves.
There is a famous Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times.”
China has always been rife with counterfeiters, from a historical perspective it is nothing new. What is new though is businesses in the US trusting Chinese merchants to not cheat them. A few people dying from tainted products in China is really no big deal to the leadership who could care less about anything but power. So far most of the instances have been based in greed, but what happens when it is intentional. I know that I and my family try to buy as little from China as possible.
What is bad (and naive) is that western companies keep thinking that there is a market in China to sell into. Western companies have also sold their souls to manufacture in, attempt to sell, or buy products from China. To save a few dollars and improve their bottom line they have destroyed manufacturing capability in the US by moving so much out of the US. Now granted if they were producing products that had toxic or environmentally damaging aspects China was very happy to take on the work.
As for the Olympics here is an editorial cartoon from a spanish blog, Olympic Logo , I don’t know who the cartoonist is, but it is very powerful.