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China Bans Breast-Enlarging Liquid
05.18.06 12:00 AM
China Bans Breast-Enlarging Liquid
By JOE McDONALD
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 18, 2006; 12:02 PM
BEIJING -- China has banned a breast-enlarging liquid that was injected into more than 300,000 women and caused such pain for some they had their breasts removed _ the latest scandal over dangerous treatments blamed on lax oversight or corrupt doctors.
The China Daily, which reported the ban Thursday, said the Chinese-made liquid, Ao Mei Ding, was approved for general use in 2000 before completing required testing and was used in hospitals and beauty parlors throughout the country.
The treatment, made by the Fu Hua Pharmaceutical Co., "continuously caused negative effects and consumer complaints, and the administration's monitoring center believes its safety cannot be guaranteed," the State Food and Drug Administration said in a statement on its Web site Thursday.
The drug's manufacturer was ordered to "deal with the incidents caused by the use of the product," the statement said, without giving details of what the company was expected to do. A phone call to the company after normal business hours Thursday wasn't answered.
China has suffered a series of medical scandals recently. Earlier this week, state media said five people died after receiving a drug for gallbladder inflammation that contained a counterfeit ingredient that can cause kidney failure.
In other cases, patients have been maimed or killed by doctors who performed complex treatments for which they weren't qualified, such as surgery to lengthen limbs.
Breast-enlargement and other cosmetic surgeries have soared in popularity in China amid rising incomes and pressure to land jobs and attract spouses.
In the Ao Mei Ding case, China Daily described the treatment as "manmade fat" but didn't say what it contained. It quoted a doctor who called it a colloid, a term that refers to a variety of gelatinous liquids.
The director of plastic surgery at Peking Union Hospital in Beijing, Qiao Qun, said an estimated 300,000 women were injected with the liquid over the past five years, the China Daily said. Hundreds of women who received the injections complained to the drug agency in November, the newspaper said.
A report by the agency in January listed 183 cases of side effects, the China Daily said. Women quoted by the newspaper said they suffered extreme chronic pain, and it said some had their breasts removed.
"Major hospitals would never use Ao Mei Ding. It is the smaller hospitals and beauty salons that use it to gain big profits," Zhang Yiming, director of plastic surgery at Wuhan Union Hospital in central China, was quoted as saying.
Several women have filed unsuccessful lawsuits against hospitals that used the liquid, and plastic surgeons in Wuhan called in 2004 for their colleagues to stop using it, the newspaper said.
A woman in her 20s who was quoted by the China Daily and identified by the nickname Xiao Cao, said she suffered pain after receiving injections of the liquid in 2003. She said blood seeped from her breasts after she gave birth in 2004.
"I was able to do nothing but cry, because I was afraid that the injected liquid was in my milk," she was quoted as saying.
Cao said the failed treatment prompted depression and quarrels with her husband. The couple divorced last year. Cao had the liquid removed by a surgeon last July, the China Daily said.
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