diethylene glycol

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/americas/06poison.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

some shit just blows your mind. even for this country. selling barrels of antifreeze instead of glycerin so that thousands of people die around the globe? parents feeding their kids what they think is cough syrup and it's actually an industrial chemical? fucking awesome.

i understand wanting to make some money, but this is absolutely revolting. it goes beyond profit, this is a singular and aggravated disregard for human life in the most evil form. if ever i will this country to burn to the ground, this would be why. fuck the olympics and the cheap exported goods and movable type and gunpowder and silk. how can a civilization that led the way in progress throughout history sire such a pathos?


from the article:

"When at least 88 children died in Haiti a decade ago, F.D.A. investigators traced the poison to the Manchurian city of Dalian, but their attempts to visit the suspected manufacturer were repeatedly blocked by Chinese officials, according to internal State Department records. Permission was granted more than a year later, but by then the plant had moved and its records had been destroyed.

“Chinese officials we contacted on this matter were all reluctant to become involved,” the American Embassy in Beijing wrote in a confidential cable. “We cannot be optimistic about our chances for success in tracking down the other possible glycerine shipments.”"

blatant and inexcusable disregard.


bold type is my own addition:

"In China, the government is vowing to clean up its pharmaceutical industry, in part because of criticism over counterfeit drugs flooding the world markets. In December, two top drug regulators were arrested on charges of taking bribes to approve drugs. In addition, 440 counterfeiting operations were closed down last year, the World Health Organization said.

But when Chinese officials investigated the role of Chinese companies in the Panama deaths, they found that no laws had been broken, according to an official of the nation’s drug enforcement agency. China’s drug regulation is “a black hole,” said one trader who has done business through CNSC Fortune Way, the Beijing-based broker that investigators say was a crucial conduit for the Panama poison."

so note here that the government is 'vowing' (which they seem to do a lot of) to clean up their act because of the criticism they are facing, not because it is morally wrong to ship barrels of poison and sell it as a consumable product. not because you are essentially guaranteeing death. not because lives of people you don't know matter. nope. that would be facing the issue and perhaps shouldering some sort of responsibility.

*gasp*

within the expat community here, there is constant discussion of getting this country 'caught up' to the pace of westernized countries. although i do sometimes employ this rhetoric, i also partly disagree with what it implies - that the differences between the 'east' and the 'west' are due to the 'east' being behind in progress. on some levels, i disagree. my dislike of the service i get in restaurants and the fat gobs of loogies being hawked and the filthy hair and long dirty fingernails and getting shoved on the metro is based on what i am used to. i'm a westerner... plus spitting spreads disease. china is filthy and disgusting sometimes, but can also be completely amazing. at the foundation of all that i find amazing is its history, and i disagree that china should start working immediately towards 'western' mimicry. it should find its way by proceeding on the plank of its own history and culture.

but FUCK, it really needs to understand certain things. call them western, call them whatever the hell you want.

• because there are 1.3 billion people in this country does not mean that lives are worthless.
  
• lifting of censorship and providing fundamental education to all citizens will only serve to prevent more diethylene glycol massacres, not that the sky will fall.
• ridding the government of corruption and cronyism will only benefit the people and will perhaps serve to more evenly distribute the current and highly skewed ownership of wealth and power.
• align the government's constant propaganda about bettering the country with what will actually make the country better, i.e. safer.

couple the industrial-grade syrup substitution with a receiving country like panama which has no infrastructure with which to quickly and effectively react to such an event and you have disaster.

and a major note to any pharmaceutical companies importing raw goods from here - test the fucking hell out of your shipment.