China banned a breast-enlarging liquid that has been injected into more than 300,000 women, causing some such pain that they had their breasts removed, a newspaper reported.
Ao Mei Ding liquid, made by Fu Hua Pharmaceutical Co., was approved for general use in 2000 before completing required testing and was used in hospitals and beauty parlors nationwide, the China Daily said on Thursday.
"It 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.
A phone call to the drug company's headquarters after normal business hours on Thursday wasn't answered.
China has suffered a series of scandals over dangerous treatments, often blamed on lax or corrupt official oversight, or dishonest doctors.
Cosmetic surgeries have soared in popularity in China as incomes rise -- along with pressure to look good, helping win jobs and spouses.
The China Daily described Ao Mei Ding as "manmade fat," but did not say what it contained. It quoted a doctor who called it a colloid, a term for various gelatinous liquids.
The director of plastic surgery at Peking Union Hospital in Beijing, Qiao Qun, said an estimated 300,000 women were injected with it in the past five years, the paper said.
Phone calls to Qiao's hospital office on Thursday were not answered.
Hundreds of women who received the injections complained to the drug agency in November, the China Daily said.
It said a January agency report listed 183 cases of side effects. Women quoted by the newspaper said they suffered extreme chronic pain. 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, the newspaper said.
A woman in her 20s, who was quoted by the China Daily and identified by the nickname Xiao Cao, or Little Cao, said she suffered pain after injections of the liquid in 2003. She said blood seeped from her breasts after she gave birth the next year.
"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 incident prompted depression and quarrels with her husband. They divorced last year.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not