Chinese drugs: Who cares?

Almost 200 Chinese cancer patients have been paralyzed by contaminated drugs, says a New York Times article today. And seeing that it’s hard to buy anything that doesn’t boast a “made in China” gold label, it’s not particularly surprising that the same drug maker exports to America. To be precise, Shanghai Hualian is the “sole supplier to the United States of the abortion pill, mifepristone, known as RU-486.”

This recent medical tragedy was probably just an accident, said a Chinese pharmaceutical official, but it follows in a long series of catastrophic oversights and corruption: “In the last two years, scores of people around the world have died after ingesting contaminated drugs and drug ingredients produced in China.” And, if that doesn’t sound bad: “Last year, China executed its top drug safety official for accepting bribes to approve drugs.”

And where was America, meanwhile? “Because of opposition from the anti-abortion movement, the F.D.A. has never publicly identified the maker of the abortion pill for the American market,” the Times reported, and even now the F.D.A. refuses to say whether other US drugs come from the Chinese company.

We may hope that no more Chinese patients will be affected, and that no American women have been hurt by this incident either. But I am reminded, yet again, of the double standard that seems to exist for the abortion industry: the repeated failure of many abortion clinics to meet basic standards of medical hygiene; the hasty approval of early contraception pills, now known to be highly toxic; the lack of proper education about the physical—not to mention psychological—consequences of abortion.

Why was the F.D.A. afraid to identify the maker of the abortion pill, and, knowing the Chinese company and its history, why would the “anti-abortion movement” react with alarm? Once again, it’s a question of women’s health and well-being, and once again, it’s not the pro-lifers who don’t care.