Inscrutable Those Chinese

Record indicate most murder result from violence,
and murder without bloodstain like
Amos without Andy - most unusual

--Charlie Chan at the Racetrack, inscrutable Chinese Detective

___________

Here we go again: 10 years after dozens of Haitian children died from tainted Chinese ''glycerine'' in cough syrup-- which was actually the cheaper diethylene glycol, a poison--the deadly product has again resurfaced in products for human consumption, killing 100 in Panama last year and showing up recently in toothpaste in the U.S.

Mary K. Pendergast, then deputy commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, wrote on Oct. 27, 1997, “The U.S. imports a lot of Chinese glycerin and it is used in ingested products such as toothpaste.” Learning how diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison used in some antifreeze, ended up in Haitian fever medicine might “prevent this tragedy from happening again” (F.D.A Tracked Poisoned Drugs, but Trail Went Cold in China.”)

But ''regulatory failings'' allowed a virtually identical poisoning to occur 10 years later. ''The cases further illustrate what happens when nations fail to police the global pipeline of pharmaceutical ingredients.''

''In a global economy, ingredients for drugs are often bought and sold many times in different countries, sometimes without proper paperwork, all of which increases the risk of fraud, the authorities say.''

These international brokers engage in a record deleting process benignly called ''neutralization,'' thereby obscuring the ground zero of the product's manufacture.

''Finding counterfeiters often means pursuing leads across foreign borders, and no international authority has the power to do that. Dr. Howard Zucker, who helps to oversee drug issues for the W.H.O., said individual countries must conduct their own trace-back investigations.''

''But if the United States could not do that on behalf of Haiti, poorer, less influential nations would have little chance of tracking down counterfeiters.'

''And as long as counterfeiters do not fear prosecution, the poisonings are likely to continue, experts say.''

We may not approve of a lot of what the U.S. is exporting these days, but this is one arena in which the ''made in the U.S.A.'' tag is a comfort. Providing the manufacturers know from whence all of the materials came.

by Lisa