Politics As Usual
Shining a Light on Power and Policy
Tom Shine covers congressional politics for ABC News.
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The Problem with Heparin
March 31, 2008 9:46 AM
I sat down Sunday morning to drink a cup of coffee and have breakfast but as soon as I opened the NEW YORK TIMES and turned to page 3 of THE WORLD SECTION, I immediately lost my appetite.
Staring me in the face was a very dramatic photo taken by Ariana Lindquist.
It showed several black kettles with a stringy, milky white substance dripping over the sides of each onto a table where some of the goo seemed to be heading to the floor. The walls of the room looked dirty and dingy and there was one person standing over the entire mess like a cook in a dirty restaurant that should be shut down by health inspectors. The line under the photo read: "SUPPLY CHAIN. This family owned workshop in Xinwangzhuang, a village in Juangsu Province, China, processes PIG INTESTINES. MUCOUS MEMBRANES FROM THE INTESTINES are used to make HEPARIN."
Heparin is a widely used blood thinner.
The article accompanying the photo was written by Walt Bogdanich, and he said the pig membranes are mixed together and cooked in a process that in "CHINA OFTEN TAKES PLACE IN UNREGULATED FAMILY WORKSHOPS."
The next stop is a middleman, called an consolidator, who gets the goo and sends it to Chinese plants that make the active ingredients in heparin. Another trader takes over from there and eventually the product reaches the United States.
Recently, of course, there has been a problem with the Heparin.
19 people have died and many hundreds more have had a very severe reaction to it. Reporter Bogdanich says MORE than 500 PLANTS IN CHINA export drug ingredients to the United States and the FDA inspected just 13 OF THEM LAST YEAR. The Chinese Heparin plant was not one of the 13.
Instead of saying grace before my meal, I said a little prayer that I never need Heparin made in China!
March 31, 2008 in Weblogs | Permalink | User Comments (3)
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Just remember when you hear of so called "isolationist" that rail against "free-trade", THIS is what we are/were trying to STOP!!!
Posted by: cba | Mar 31, 2008 11:58:20 AM
This is insanity. Our Federal Government is in place to protect us from internal and external threats. Right now they are doing the worst possible job at protecting us.
Please god get some oversight and some regulatory going on and get rid of lobbying by huge corporations.
Posted by: FormerRepub | Mar 31, 2008 1:53:01 PM
This is nauseous.
Posted by: katrina | Apr 3, 2008 11:55:07 AM
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