China's medicine wars

An attack on the traditional healing arts has inflamed adherents and sparked a debate about Western healthcare.

By Mark Magnier, L.A. Times Staff Writer
January 8, 2007

Xikou, China — THE fur is flying, not to mention the acupuncture needles, the firewort and the $15,000-a-pound bull gallstones. China's ancient healing arts, as integral to national identity as the Great Wall or steamed dumplings, have become embroiled in the country's struggle to balance tradition and modernity.

A relatively obscure professor at a regional university kicked off the controversy in October with an online petition calling for traditional medicine to be stripped from the Chinese Constitution. It has a protected status here that, at least in theory, guarantees it equal footing with its Western counterpart.

Professor Zhang Gongyao and fellow critics have blasted Chinese medicine as an often ineffective, even dangerous derivative of witchcraft that relies on untested concoctions and obscure ingredients to trick patients, then employs a host of excuses if the treatment doesn't work.

For adherents of the 3,000-year-old system, this borders on heresy. The Health Ministry labeled Zhang's ideas "ignorant of history," and traditionalists have called the skeptics traitors bent on "murdering" Chinese culture.

Ironically, the firestorm dovetails with a growing embrace of Chinese medicine abroad as an antidote to the perceived soulless, money-obsessed nature of Western healthcare.

On a trip to China in mid-December, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said the two countries planned to trade lessons on how to integrate Western and Chinese medicine.

"It's an area of interest for China and the U.S.," he said.

Many Australians, Europeans and Americans see the limitations of advanced science, said Rey Tiquia, an expert in Chinese traditional medicine based in Australia, even as more Chinese view their traditions as old-fashioned.

"For Chinese," he said, "it's still the lure of something new and shiny, like riding a car rather than a bicycle."

Since 1949, the number of traditional doctors trained in China has fallen by nearly half to 270,000, while the number of Western-trained doctors has jumped twentyfold to more than 1.7 million.

Criticism that traditional medicine is not scientific dates back centuries. But Zhang's prescriptive remedies — including an end to national insurance coverage for traditional medicine, rigorous scientific standards and obligatory Western training for traditional doctors — have hit a nerve at a time when traditional Chinese medicine is increasingly on the defensive.

At Beijing's prestigious Xiehe Hospital, cardiology, gynecology, internal medicine and other Western specialties are housed in a new six-story building filled with shiny equipment, well-maintained halls and renovated toilets. The traditional medicine department is relegated to eight consulting rooms and a therapeutic facility in an outer building with peeling green paint, water-stained walls and a foul smell emanating from a dimly lighted toilet.

Some blame skewed financial incentives and a government that is forgetting its roots.

"The Health Ministry is actually the Ministry of Western Health," said Lin Zhongpeng, a researcher with the Beijing Tianren Yiyi Traditional Medicine Institute. "It's also shocking that doctors get 15% kickbacks selling Western drugs."

TRADITIONAL remedies tend to be less expensive than Western ones. At the Tongrentang traditional pharmacy and clinic along Dashila alley in Beijing, a dozen people waited for football-sized bags of herbs for a few dollars each.

"Give me some deer sinew," said one customer, asking for a traditional cure for arthritis. "Large or small?" a clerk in a white coat asked, grabbing several from a tray.

But there are some notable, more expensive exceptions. In glass cases, beneath an ad touting an herbal tonic for avian flu, shelves brimmed with dried snakes, sea horses, ground-up pearls and deer horn powder, used for ailments such as rheumatism, paralysis, asthma, epilepsy, gastritis and acute infantile convulsions.

Nearby sat an ornate green box lined with red satin holding a shriveled deer penis and testicles ensemble for $63 — nature's apparent answer to Viagra. "That's to improve male function," an employee explained helpfully.

Deer privates at nearly a month's average wage hardly top the price list.

"The most expensive would be bull gallstones," a clerk said, pointing at a yellowish shrink-wrapped object the size of a nickel, used for fevers and inflammation.

In an adjoining building, third-generation traditional doctor Guan Qingwei examined several patients, prescribing different herbal combinations for insomnia, high-blood pressure and rashes.

Unlike Western medicine, which focuses on the disease, traditional medicine takes a holistic approach, he said. Adherents of "ZangXiang," one of the discipline's fundamental tenets, believe the body gives external clues to the imbalance of internal organs, which can be rectified with herbs and acupuncture. This makes knowledge of anatomy unnecessary, he said.

Both systems have their strengths, Guan said, but judging traditional medicine according to Western scientific theory and using "double blind" tests on herbal remedies is inappropriate.

"Not only is it unfair, it's laughable," he said. "It's like judging hamburgers based on the taste of dumplings."

Although Chinese schools pump out thousands of traditional medicine graduates each year, nearly half never practice — they chose the specialty because other departments were full.

This is in contrast with the United States, where most people who study medicine are mature, highly motivated students.

A Chinese government delegation on a recent visit to California said the U.S. could surpass China soon as the best place to learn traditional medicine, said Lixin Huang, president of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco, the nation's oldest such graduate program.

Traditional medicine in China tends to be more popular in rural areas and among older people, in part because of its lower cost.

Each day here in the farm village of Xikou, traditional doctor Liu Huade, 92, sees as many as a dozen patients suffering from ailments such as kidney failure, "women's problems" and liver tumors. Until a few years ago, he picked all of his own herbs in the nearby mountains.

Liu Qiuyao, 59, stopped by to have his pulse checked. Privacy was hardly a concern as a dog wandered in and out of the one-room consultation area accompanied by several villagers eager to chat or buy pills.

Two years ago, Liu, an impoverished farmer, spit up blood and was told to go to a Western medicine hospital, but he couldn't afford it. So he came to the traditional doctor, who cured him with herbs.

"I'd rather come here," he said, his right eye fused shut beneath a shock of unkempt hair. "When a prescription is too expensive, Dr. Liu tells me where to pick the herbs myself."

A common criticism of Chinese medicine involves its often-unregulated ingredients.

"Many herbal medicines considered innocuous are actually very toxic," said Fang Zhouzi, a biochemist, columnist and founder of a website that targets academic fraud. "But practitioners and proponents cover this up using various excuses."

THE U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned products marketed as Chinese herbal medicine during the 1970s and '80s after they were implicated in several deaths. In 2004, the FDA issued a ban on the controversial herb ephedra after it was linked to heart attacks and strokes.

Chinese traditional experts blame misuse. They point to guan mu tong, which has been used for centuries to treat urinary tract infections. Problems surfaced only when Westerners used it incorrectly as part of a weight loss therapy, they say.

Nor are Western drugs free of powerful side effects, others counter.

"Why don't people talk about Western medicines that cause problems?" said Zheng Jinsheng, a professor at the Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing, who thinks both disciplines have their place. "Why is traditional medicine always blamed?"

Chinese medicine's use of endangered animal and plant ingredients also has been cause for concern. Officially, China forbids trading in the items, but rising incomes and old habits threaten species worldwide.

Only about 30 Chinese tigers, hunted for their bones and other parts, remain in the wild, experts estimate, compared with tens of thousands a few decades ago. Tiger parts are used for rheumatism and to increase virility.

Substances such as bear gallbladder bile are legal, but the cruel conditions under which they are "farmed" have attracted worldwide criticism.

"People in China need to change their values," said Mang Ping, associate professor at Beijing's Central Institute of Socialism. "And most of the time there are replacements in traditional medicine."

Dog bones, for example, are now recommended in lieu of tiger bones, buffalo horns for rhinoceros horns.

Western medicine was introduced to China by missionaries in the late 16th century, though it remained largely a curiosity for centuries. Starting in the early 19th century, missionary hospitals became more widespread as European nations elbowed for influence in a weakened China.

"There was a proverb that the door that couldn't be opened with a gun could be opened with a single surgery knife," said Zheng, the professor at the Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.

In 1914 and again in 1929, pro-Western governments tried unsuccessfully to ban traditional medicine as backward and unsafe, spurred by the likes of intellectual Liang Qichao, who had his healthy right kidney accidentally removed by Western-trained doctors but still sung their praises.

Traditional doctors, threatened with the loss of their livelihoods, spread rumors that Western doctors removed Chinese organs and stored them in their churches, using children's hearts in demon rituals.

"We must never forget our roots," said Li Jian, 46, a business consultant, accompanying his father to a traditional doctor for a liver ailment. "Western medicine always tries to judge traditional medicine from its perspective. Maybe if China becomes very powerful one day, we'll return the favor."

mark.magnier@latimes.com

*

Yin Lijin of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

Commute Time

In this week's New Yorker, there's an article about commuting. Did you know that the average commute time in America is 51 minutes? The vast majority of those commuters go by car. According to the article, commuting by car increases social isolation and leads to increased unhappiness (not to mention all the fossil fuels used - google ocean acidification). New Yorkers are supposedly the happiest urban commuters in the U.S.A. - possibly due to our shared sense of community when we're on the train...

I'm so glad I'm in a field where I can pretty much set up anywhere and do business. I plan to live "over the store" as they say - I want my commute to be down a flight of stairs or across a courtyard.

[speaking of courtyards, I've always had the dream of having an interior courtyard. You know, a house with the garden in the middle of it rather than in the front or back. With a packed earth platform for doing martial arts.]

There's a bit in the article about how people trade social goods for material goods. In other words, people trade time with their kids, time with friends, and home cooked meals for bigger houses, more space between them and their neighbors, bigger autos. HOW SAD!

By the way, I am moving to Los Angeles. I've had enough of PCOM. There may be a few more posts but essentially I'm done. Orientation at Yosan is April 27th and I'm going to be there...

Ho's Trading Inc. Issues Alert on Undeclared Sulfites in Fortune Star Brand Dried Lily Bulb

Contact: Alvin Ho 718-622-2288

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Brooklyn, NY -- February 5, 2007 -- Ho's Trading Inc, 1010 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY 11238 is recalling Fortune Star Brand Dried Lily Bulb, because it contains undeclared sulfites. People who have severe sensitivity to sulfites run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reactions if they consume this product.

The recalled Fortune Star Brand Dried Lily Bulb is packed in 10 oz., un-coded plastic bags. The products were sold nationwide.

The recall was initiated after routine sampling by New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Food Inspectors and subsequent analysis of the product by Food Laboratory personnel revealed the presence of undeclared sulfites in Fortune Star Brand Dried Lily Bulb which did not declare sulfites on the label. The consumption of 10 milligrams of sulfites per serving has been reported to elicit severe reaction in some asthmatics. Anaphylactic shock could occur in certain sulfites sensitive individuals upon ingesting 10 milligrams or more of sulfites.

No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with this problem.

Consumers who have purchased Fortune Star Brand Dried Lily Bulb should return it to the place of purchase. Consumer with any questions may contact the company at 718-622-2288.

The Pitfalls of For-Profit Schools

Very revealing article in the New York Times today about Phoenix University - the nation's largest private university, which happens to be for-profit, much like our beloved Pacific College of Oriental Medicine.

Here's the lede:

The University of Phoenix became the nation’s largest private university by delivering high profits to investors and a solid, albeit low-overhead, education to midcareer workers seeking college degrees.

But its reputation is fraying as prominent educators, students and some of its own former administrators say the relentless pressure for higher profits, at a university that gets more federal student financial aid than any other, has eroded academic quality.

Sound familiar?

Take a look at the full article===>

Beijing Orders Investigation of Health Agency

This article, from today's New York Times, seems to talk only about pharmaceutical drugs - I wonder if TCM products are affected.

See also: pcomstudents.net

SHANGHAI, Feb. 9 — Concerned about a growing number of cases that involve the sale of fraudulent or dangerous medicine, the Chinese government said today that it had ordered a thorough investigation into the agency that is supposed to be the national regulatory watchdog, the state food and drug administration.

The move comes amid a widening investigation into corruption in the country’s fast-growing pharmaceutical industry.

Small Chinese drug makers have long been accused or suspected of producing cheap counterfeit versions of well-known drugs, often using substandard or hazardous substitute ingredients, and selling them to the nation’s hospitals and pharmacies.

Some of those phony drugs have been blamed in recent years for widespread illnesses and scores of deaths.

Now, the government says that corruption in the state food and drug administration, which is based in Beijing, was a major part of the problem.

The government said it had detained Zheng Xiaoyu, the head of the agency from its founding in 1998 until June 2005, when he retired, and that it is investigating whether Mr. Zheng accepted bribes from Chinese pharamaceutical companies in exchange for approving drug production licenses.

The state-run news media said that a high-level government body was recently told that Mr. Zheng had “neglected his duty to supervise the drug market, abused the administration’s drug approval authority, took bribes and turned a blind eye to bad practices by relatives and subordinate officials.”

Two other high-ranking officials of the agency have also been detained. In November, one of them, the director of the division in charge of issuing production licenses, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption.

No western drug companies appear to be involved in the investigation, though some global drug companies have complained about Chinese counterfeiting of their most popular drugs.

Even so, the scandal may have global implications, because experts say that a large percentage of the medicine sold in the developing world is counterfeit, and that China is a main source.

The scandal is almost certain to intensify concerns in the global pharmaceutical industry about China’s regulatory controls and its oversight of a drug industry that has a history of infringing drug patents and trademarks.

The investigation was ordered by senior government leaders, including Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice-Premier Wu Yi, an indication of how serious the problem of fraudulent drugs has become in China.

Reports of illnesses and deaths caused by dangerous foods or fraudulent drugs have been frequent in recent years. Last May, for instance, 11 people died in China after being given injections tainted by a fake chemical.

In July, six people died and 80 people fell ill nationwide after taking an antibiotic that was produced using a “substandard disinfectant.”

An even more sensational case occurred in 2004, when at least 13 babies died and more than 100 other children suffered from severe malnutrition in eastern Anhui Province after being fed fake milk powder.

The authorities here are also trying to crack down on the production of unlicensed generic versions of popular drugs.

Last May, 10 people were arrested here in Shanghai for selling knocked-off Tamiflu, a drug used to prevent and treat influenza.

In a statement posted on the food and drug agency’s web site today, Wu Yi, the vice premier, said the government would severely punish the “wicked activities” that put adulterated food and drugs on the market.

Worried that corruption may have seeped into the top levels of the agency, the government said on Thursday that it would review more than 170,000 production licenses issued over the past decade, particularly those issued between 1999 and 2002.

The inquiry is expected to slow the drug approval process at a time when demand for medicine is soaring in an overburdented health care system.

Zhu Changhao, vice chairman of the China Association of Pharmaceutical Commerce, a Beijing-based trade group, acknowledged today that “corruption certainly exists in the drug administration system.”

But, he added, “I wouldn’t say that the whole drug administration system is corrupt.”

The problems with fake drugs in China have been developing for years. As long ago as 2000, officials were warning about “illegal medicine fairs” and widespread counterfeiting. In 2002, Mr. Zheng, a 20-year veteran of China’s drug industry, told a conference that his agency had uncovered 70,000 instances of fake drugs in the first half of that year alone, and said he was working to crack down on the problem, according to reports in state-run news outlets. The agency was reported to have revoked the business licenses of some 160 manufacturers and retailers in 2006.

Senator Tim Johnson's Condition

As you have probably already heard, Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat from South Dakota, suffered a neurological injury the other day. He was on a conference call with reporters when he started stuttering and having trouble forming words. He was later admitted to the hospital and had emergency surgery. Details from the operation are now available via the NY Times...

Birth Defect Led to Stroke in Senator, Doctors Say

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Senator Tim Johnson suffered an unusual form of stroke, one due to bleeding into his brain from an abnormality present from birth, according to a statement from Adm. John F. Eisold, the attending physician of the Capitol, and interviews with neurological experts.

Mr. Johnson, 59, is in an intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital after undergoing emergency surgery for the stroke late Wednesday. He is being heavily sedated to rest his brain, a standard treatment after such surgery.

Mr. Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, is expected to be in intensive care for several days — also standard — while doctors determine if any brain damage occurred that would affect movement or intellectual ability. Admiral Eisold and experts not involved in Mr. Johnson’s case said it was too early to tell how well he might recover.

Admiral Eisold and Mr. Johnson’s family have not said where in the brain the bleeding occurred or how large the hemorrhage was, and they have not disclosed other factors that could be important in determining the seriousness of his illness. For example, it is not known whether doctors had previously detected the malformation in Mr. Johnson’s brain.

One expert, Dr. David J. Langer of Manhattan, said that the type of stroke and the speed with which the doctors operated offered a guarded prognosis.

“The fact that he had emergency surgery after an event during the day suggests that he had bleeding that was life-threatening,” said Dr. Langer, who directs cerebro-vascular neurosurgery at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt, Beth Israel and Long Island College Hospital. “You don’t just take the blood out to take it out, you only take it out when a life is threatened,” he said, “and that means he was deteriorating in his level of consciousness. There would be no other reason for an emergency operation.”

Dr. Langer said that if Mr. Johnson’s condition was deteriorating rapidly, doctors most likely did not have time to obtain critical details from a magnetic resonance imaging scan and probably operated after performing a CT X-ray scan. In general, malformations of the sort that caused Mr. Johnson’s stroke are best detected on M.R.I.’s.

In such circumstances, Dr. Langer said, neurosurgeons often cannot determine the cause of the bleeding until they operate.

Dr. David S. Liebeskind, associate director of the University of California, Los Angeles, Stroke Center said that surgery for arteriovenous malformations can be as complex as any involving the brain.

In Mr. Johnson’s favor, said Dr. Liebeskind, is that “it sounds like they caught this problem fairly early” and “could intervene before further damage occurred.”

But he and other experts said that Mr. Johnson’s prognosis would depend in part on what doctors observe as they monitor and test him over the next few days.

Standard care would involve seeking evidence of swelling of his brain and signs of further bleeding as well as preventing seizures. The doctors will monitor Mr. Johnson’s heart function in part because such strokes can put great stress on the body.

The doctors are expected to lighten the sedation after a few days to look for damage.

Dr. Lee H. Schwamm, director of acute stroke care at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said that initial findings may not reflect a patient’s long-term outcome.

Patients with mild neurological disabilities usually recover well. But patients with serious disabilities do not necessarily have a bad outcome and can recover significantly.

Studies have shown that fewer than 0.5 percent of people have arteriovenous malformations and that some forms of them are hereditary.

The malformations are characterized by a direct connection between arteries and veins. Normally, blood vessels known as capillaries serve as the connections.

Although the malformations are present from birth, it often takes years for the pressure to build to the point of rupturing.

Doctors have been detecting arteriovenous malformations more frequently since the introduction of CT and M.R.I. scans beginning in the mid-1970’s. Before then, doctors had no way to detect such malformations until they bled.

The malformations are sometimes found on scans among patients who receive them after complaining of headaches and nonspecific symptoms. But many such incidentally detected malformations are small, leaving doctors uncertain whether and how to treat them. This is among the reasons that Dr. Jay P. Mohr at Columbia University is leading a federally sponsored study to determine among other things whether it is better to operate early or to watch and wait.

Red Wine: Better Than Huang Qi?

A study on resveratrol has found that in large enough doses, the substance doubles endurance, extends life and boosts the immune system. From the New York Times story:

Though resveratrol has long been known to be a component of red wine and other foods, it is present there in only minuscule amounts, compared with the very large doses used in experiments. Dr. Sinclair dosed his mice daily with 22 milligrams of resveratrol for each kilogram of weight, and Dr. Auwerx used up to 400 milligrams. No one could drink enough red wine to obtain such doses.

To which I say: just watch me.

String Theory

Brian Greene's op-ed piece on string theory has some interesting things for us to chew on. Essentially the main problem in physics today is how to come up with a theory that unifies the laws of physics in the universe. Currently there are two sets of rules: general relativity for big things like planets and stars, and quantum mechanics for small things like the nuclei of atoms. To physicists, this doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make sense in terms of traditional Chinese thinking either. Daoist philosophy tells us that the body is a microcosm of the universe - do you think the law of yin and yang and the five elements doesn't apply to Mars and Venus just as much as it does to your Heart and Lungs? Don't be ridiculous!

Also, scientists have invented a cloak of invisibility. It's not exactly what you're thinking - it only works on the level of microwaves - in other words you can still see the object with your naked eye. But it's a step. Also it's not really a cloak. As one person associated with the project said, it's more like an invisibility shed. Still!

The Universe on a String -->
Experts create invisibility cloak -->

Dead Bachelors in Remote China Still Find Wives

From The New York Times

By JIM YARDLEY

CHENJIAYUAN, China — For many Chinese, an ancestor is someone to honor, but also someone whose needs must be maintained. Families burn offerings of fake money or paper models of luxury cars in case an ancestor might need pocket change or a stylish ride in the netherworld.

But here in the parched canyons along the Yellow River known as the Loess Plateau, some parents with dead bachelor sons will go a step further. To ensure a son’s contentment in the afterlife, some grieving parents will search for a dead woman to be his bride and, once a corpse is obtained, bury the pair together as a married couple.

“They happen pretty often, especially when teenagers or younger people die,” said Yang Husheng, 48, a traveling funeral director in the region who said he last attended such a funeral in the spring. “It’s quite common. I’ve been in the business for seven or eight years, and I’ve seen all sorts of things.”

The rural folk custom, startling to Western sensibilities, is known as minghun, or afterlife marriage. Scholars who have studied it say it is rooted in the Chinese form of ancestor worship, which holds that people continue to exist after death and that the living are obligated to tend to their wants — or risk the consequences. Traditional Chinese beliefs also hold that an unmarried life is incomplete, which is why some parents worry that an unmarried dead son may be an unhappy one.

In random interviews in different villages across the Loess Plateau, which spreads across parts of Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces, everyone acknowledged the custom. People say parents of a dead son depend on an informal network of friends or family, or even a well-connected fixer, to locate a family that has recently lost a single daughter. Selling or buying corpses for commercial purposes is illegal in China, but these individual transactions, usually for cash, seem to fall into a fuzzier category and are quietly arranged between families.

In some villages, a son is eligible for such a spouse if he is 12 or older when he dies. None of the people interviewed considered the custom shameful or overly macabre. Instead, it was described as a parental duty to a lost child that reflected Confucian values about loyalty to family.

“Parents have a sense of responsibility for their son,” said one woman, Li Yinlan. She said she had attended ceremonies where the coffins were placed side by side and musicians played a dirge. “They have this custom everywhere,” she said of her region.

The Communist Party has tried, with mixed success, to stamp out beliefs it considers to be superstition. But the continued practice of the ancient custom in the Loess Plateau is a testament to the region’s extreme isolation. In other parts of rural China, it is difficult to know how often, if at all, the custom is followed.

The Loess Plateau, a dense warren of eroding canyons where some villages are unreachable by roads, is separated from much of the change stirring up China. Many young people have fled the arid hills, while those left behind struggle to raise a crop. Many of the men left behind also struggle to find a wife.

The reason is that many women have left for work in cities, never to return, while those women who remain can afford to be picky. No family would approve of a daughter marrying a man too poor to afford a dowry and a decent future. Families of the poorest bachelor sons sometimes pool their savings to buy a wife from bride sellers, the traveling brokers who lure, trick or sometimes kidnap women from other regions and then illegally sell them into marriage.

In the tiny village of Chenjiayuan, a farmer named Chen Xingwu, 57, stabbed a spade into his field overlooking the Yellow River and said minghun represented the final effort by parents to find a bride for a son. He said the parents of a local disabled man were so worried their son would die before finding a spouse that they recently gave a gold ring and earrings to a woman’s family to secure her as a bride.

Mr. Chen said his own marriage, at 35, was a lucky stroke, coming after he lobbied the family of a younger woman in another village. It allowed him to have three children and carry on his family name. But he said the pool of available brides was limited, a scarcity that increased their value — an irony, given that some rural families, conscious of China’s one-child policy, abort female fetuses before birth or abandon newborn girls.

“For girls, it doesn’t matter about their minds, whether they are an idiot or not,” he said. “They are still wanted as brides.” Dead or alive, he added, as he peered at the river.

“There are girls who have drowned in the river down there,” he said. “When their bodies have washed up, their families could get a couple of thousand yuan for them.”

Villagers and Mr. Yang, the funeral director, said a family searching for a female corpse typically must pay more than 10,000 yuan, or about $1,200, almost four years of income for an average farmer. Families of the bride regard the money as the dowry they would have received had death not intervened.

The existence of such a market for brides has led to scattered reports of grave robbing. This year, a man in Shaanxi Province captured two men trying to dig up the body of his wife, according to a local news account. In February, a woman from Yangquan tried to buy the remains of a dead 15-year-old girl, abandoned at a hospital in another city, to satisfy her unmarried deceased brother. She said the brother’s ghost was invading her dreams and demanding a wife, according to a news account.

Guo Yuhua, a sociology professor at Qinghua University in Beijing, an expert on folk traditions and burial customs in the Loess Plateau, said the minghun custom stemmed from both dread and sympathy for the dead. She said parents with dead daughters, like those with dead sons, were also carrying out an obligation to their child. They will sell their bodies as a way of finding them a place in a Chinese society where tradition dictates that a daughter has no place on her father’s family tree.

“China is a paternal clan culture,” said Professor Guo, who did postdoctoral work in anthropology at Harvard. “A woman does not belong to her parents. She must marry and have children of her own before she has a place among her husband’s lineage. A woman who dies unmarried has no place in this world.”

Pinpointing the origins of minghun is difficult, but scholars have found allusions to the practice in different ancient texts, including the Rites of Zhou, a guidebook of appropriate Confucian behavior written around the third century B.C. Commentators on the Confucian classics have argued that the ancient educated elite disapproved of the custom.

Yet Professor Guo emphasized that the values of Confucianism, later blended with Buddhism and Taoism, are the basis of folk customs like minghun, which share a reverence for family.

In the village of Qinjiagelao, where roughly one in four eligible men are unmarried, Qin Yuxing, 80, is a genial grandfather unashamed of the minghun practice or the fact that he bought living brides for both his sons.

His younger son, now 40, had tried to find a spouse but the family was too poor. The elder Mr. Qin saved his money and bought a bride from a man who showed up at a local market offering a woman for $500. The woman bore Mr. Qin’s son a child and then left three years ago to visit her family — and never came back.

“People aren’t willing to come here,” the elder Mr. Qin said to explain why he was willing to purchase a woman for his son. His village is perched atop a cliff and had no road until last year. Women often face backbreaking work. Mr. Qin said similar pressures weighed on a neighboring family after their unmarried son died in a gas explosion more than a decade ago. That family spent $500 for an afterlife marriage, he said. Mr. Qin’s wife, Cao Guoxiang, 76, recalled another case involving parents buying a dead bride for their unmarried son, a trucker who died in an accident.

She said the size of afterlife ceremonies depended on a family’s wealth. “Poor people just bring the bodies over and put them in the earth,” she said. “People with money will have a reception and slaughter a pig or a sheep for friends.”

She added: “It’s superstition and religion. People live as couples. If they die, they should live as a couple, too.”

And that is why families too poor to afford a minghun bride also follow a similar custom in some villages: They make a figure of straw and bury it beside a dead son as the spouse he never had.

Jake Hooker contributed reporting.

Beijing's Penis Emporium

...The restaurant's gristly menu was dreamt up by a man called Mr Guo. He is 81 now and retired.

After fleeing China's civil war back in 1949, he moved to Taiwan, and then to Atlanta, Georgia, where he began to look deeper into traditional Chinese medicine, and experiment on the appendages of man's best friend.

Apparently, they are low in cholesterol and good, not just for boosting the male sex drive, but for treating all sorts of ailments.

Read the full story at bbc.co.uk-->

USDA SAYS SHUT UP AND EAT YOUR FRANKENRICE

The USDA has finally reacted to the contamination of the U.S. rice
supply by an unapproved, genetically engineered variety of rice
created by the Bayer Corporation. Three weeks ago, it was discovered
that Bayer's mutant rice, gene-spliced to survive heavy doses of a
powerful herbicide called glufosinate, had contaminated U.S. long
grain rice stocks. The USDA admitted it had "no idea" how extensive
the contamination was. Meanwhile Japan has banned all U.S. rice
imports, while the EU is rejecting U.S. imports that test positive
for contamination. The rice industry has been in a state of upheaval,
with rumors of a massive market recall spreading across the country.
This week, the USDA announcd its plan of action: instead of recalling
this illegal, and potentially unsafe rice, it is working with Bayer to
fast-track the approval process. "Illegal, potentially hazardous rice
in grain bins, on supermarket shelves, in cereal, beer, baby foods,
and all rice products. It should be a no-brainer. Recall this stuff
to make sure no one eats it," said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director
of the Center for Food Safety. "Instead, USDA plans to rush through
'market approval' of a genetically engineered rice that Bayer itself
decided was unfit for commerce. Why? To free Bayer from liability."

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_2159.cfm

This is a global crisis because all GMO foods can contaminate natural
species, even organic crops. It is long past time to organize
effectively to protect our heritage and the future.

Eat Up! Man Lives to 112 on Sausages and Waffles

George Johnson, considered California's oldest living person at 112 and the state's last surviving World War I veteran, had experts shaking their heads over his junk food diet.

"He had terrible bad habits. He had a diet largely of sausages and waffles," Dr. L. Stephen Coles, founder of the Gerontology Research Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Friday.

Johnson was 5 foot 7 and 140 pounds when he died on Wednesday of pneumonia in Richmond, California.

Hmm... were they really bad habits? What kind of waffles and sausages were they? Eggos and Jimmy Dean? Or did he cook them from scratch? Did someone cook for him? Did he eat slowly and enjoy his food? What was his attitude toward life? Did he eat with people he liked? Did he say grace before eating? I think it's unlikely he lived to 112 by shoveling loveless food in his mouth alone in front of a television. Maybe it's not so important what he ate but how he ate...

Man lives to 112 despite sausage-and-waffles diet
George Johnson, 112; Oldest Californian Was Thought to Be Its Last World War I Vet

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A win for Stephanie Trzaska is a win for all of us! Stephanie graduated about a year ago(?) and has some kind of feature in TimeOut New York! Huzzah!

She treated me a few times, once for an incredible attack of damp-heat wind that manifested as a creeping rash that spread over sixty percent of my body... it came and left within twenty-four hours, with the help of Stephanie's needles and some Xiao Feng San [消风散 Dispel Wind Formula].

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The High Price of Illness in China

Dr Liu Quan trudges 20km (12 miles) a day along Sichuan's muddy mountain paths on his rounds.

A village doctor for the past 55 years, he was just 15 when he started practising as a third-generation herbalist.

In the 1970s he received simple training under Chairman Mao's programme to send "barefoot doctors" to serve China's rural masses.

Dr Liu still wears a faded Mao suit and a picture of the Great Helmsman dominates his bare clinic. He remembers those days with nostalgia.

"In Chairman Mao's time, you could see a doctor whether you had money or not. We could carry out disease prevention, like injections, whether our patients had money or not. Nowadays only those with money can get injections," he says.

Full story at BBC-->

Abbot of Taoist Temple Found Disemboweled with Upper Burner Organs "Sliced and Fried"

A farmer has been arrested in China's Shaanxi province accused of the gruesome killing of 10 people at a Taoist temple, state media said.

Qiu Xinghua, 47, was held on Saturday when he returned to his home in Fobing.

His alleged victims were aged between 12 and 62 and included the abbot of the Tiewadian temple in Ankang, whose organs were found "sliced and fried".

The words "He deserves it" were written at the scene in the blood of the victims, the media reports said.

Full story at BBC-->