What the HELL is going on in China? [View All]

[SoCalDem]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4779165.html

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE!!


May 6, 2007, 12:24AM
Syrupy killer in medicine bottle

Records show in 3 of last 4 global cases, the poison sold as glycerin was made in China

By WALT BOGDANICH and JAKE HOOKER
New York Times

A syrupy poison, diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part of the modern world, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in antifreeze. It also is a killer. And the deaths, if not intentional, are often no accident. The kidneys fail first. Then the central nervous system begins to misfire. Paralysis spreads, making breathing difficult, then often impossible without assistance. In the end, most victims die. Many of them are children, poisoned at the hands of their unsuspecting parents.

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In this environment, Wang Guiping, a tailor with a ninth-grade education and access to a chemistry book, found it easy to enter the pharmaceutical supply business as a middleman. He quickly discovered what others had before him: that counterfeiting was a simple way to increase profits.

And then people in China began to die.

Cheating the system

Wang spent years as a tailor in the manufacturing towns of the Yangtze Delta, in eastern China. But he did not want to remain a common craftsman, villagers say. He set his sights on trading chemicals, a business rooted in the many small chemical plants that have sprouted in the region.

"He didn't know what he was doing," Wang's older brother, Wang Guoping, said in an interview. "He didn't understand chemicals." but he did understand how to cheat the system.

Wang Guiping, 41, realized he could earn extra money by substituting cheaper, industrial-grade syrup — not approved for human consumption — for pharmaceutical grade syrup. To trick pharmaceutical buyers, he forged his licenses and laboratory analysis reports, records show. Wang later told investigators that he figured no harm would come from the substitution, because he initially tested a small quantity. He did it with the expertise of a former tailor.

He swallowed some of it. When nothing happened, he shipped it.One company that used the syrup beginning in early 2005 was Qiqihar No.2 Pharmaceutical, about 1,000 miles away in the far northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A buyer for the factory had seen a posting for Wang's syrup on an industry Web site.

After a while, Wang set out to find an even cheaper substitute syrup so he could increase his profit even more, according to the Chinese investigator. In a chemical book, he found what he was looking for: another odorless syrup — diethylene glycol. At the time, it sold for 6,000 to 7,000 yuan a ton, or about $725 to $845, while pharmaceutical-grade syrup cost 15,000 yuan, or about $1,815, according to the investigator.

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