Sad Story: Ph.D. Student Killed By “Traditional Chinese Medicine”
March 26th, 2008
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There are a lot of people out there who will tell you that the best way to treat anything is with “alternative” or “traditional” medicine and that natural herbs, old folk remedies and various other alternative concoctions are harmless. In most cases, the preparations are not directly dangerous, but do pose the danger of displacing legitimate medical treatment or end up causing someone to put their money and trust in a worthless idea like homeopathy. But in some cases, the alternative treatments can be dangerous or even deadly in and of themselves.
That is apparently what happened to Ling ‘Carrie’ Wang. Miss Wang was apparently a very well liked and bright student finishing up work on her Ph.D. She apparently both smart and a very active member of the community with many friends. But Miss Wang is now dead and the doctors who attempted to save her believe that the death was caused by an herbal remedy which she had taken for an upset stomach.
But, after taking the treatment she was admitted to hospital and fell into a coma.
The mystery medicine, which doctors said was hard to analyse, caused Miss Wang’s liver and other organs to shut down.
After hearing evidence from three specialists, Newcastle Coroner Karen Graham said there could be no other reason for the PhD student’s death.
….All other possible causes of her condition, including paracetamol overdose and infection, were ruled out, doctors said.
Dr Stuart added: “Chinese remedies are often a mixture of different compounds. No treatment had any impact. There was simply nothing we could’ve done for her.”
Despite all attempts to save Miss Wang, she died shortly after slipping into a coma. Her doctors believe she ingested “Jin Bu Huan,” a substance claimed by Chinese medicine to be a treatment for stomach problems and a myrid of other unrelated conditions. Jin Bu Huan has been known to be associated with acute liver problems. It may also be that other substances in the concoction contributed to her death. Since the liver is responsible for breaking down many toxic compounds, any substance which might impair this could amplify the effects of other toxic materials.
Despite being an engineering Ph.D. student, and by all accounts very intelligent, Miss Wang died of something which was entirely preventable. Proving once again that smart people can sometimes be very very stupid. Miss Wang was apparently also a devout Christian (for what that is worth.) It is hard to pick on her though, because although the use of the deadly “traditional” medicine was undoubtedly not a very smart thing to do, reading the article it is impossible not to get a sense of just how heartbroken many of her friends are at her loss.
She was 25 years old and had been attending Newcastle University in the UK. She was originally from China and this may account for her access to “medications” which would likely be less avaliable in Brittan due to their dangers.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 26th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Jin Bu Huan (JBH) is a traditional Chinese herbal product used as a sedative and analgesic. During 1993, public health and health-care providers in Colorado reported three children with unintentional overdoses of JBH that caused central nervous system and respiratory depression with rapid onset of life-threatening bradycardia.
JBH differs from most herb products in that it is a purified chemical compound, Tetrahydropalmatine, an isoquinoline alkaloid, and so has some of the same potential problems that occur with pharmaceutical products.
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Any idea of how much of an overdose would be required to have this effect?
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
There’s a saying which someone might be able to help me with about nature dishing out punishment for stupidity and the penalty being swift and never reprieved. the implication is that stupid people die from their own stupidity.
It is sad though and in reality its not like people get punished all the time. Life is unfair. This girl sounds like she was very well liked with a lot of friends and a pleasant person with a lot going for her. She put her faith in Chinese medicine (and apparently religion too.) That was an idiotic thing to do, really. She didn’t deserve capital punishment for the first offense though. If she had gotten a horrible stomach ache and learned her lesson that would have been fair, but life isn’t fair.
People don’t vaccinate their kids. They run around complaining about wifi. They fight nuclear energy for no good reason and they live a long life and die rich. Then you have someone like this who makes an equally dumb decision and gets killed possibly on her first go.
I don’t usually have sympathy for people doing idiotic things, but she didn’t deserve to die for it, so this is truly very sad. Ain’t life a bitch?
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
TomInAK said:
Well I did a little searching online and it seems not necessarily much at all. It can be rather powerful especially in some individuals and it can interact with other drugs such as sedatives and alergy medication even OTC stuff. It seems that it has an incident of liver problems which precludes it from being in any medications sold in the US. It can be very dangerous if it has other stuff in the pill because it can cause the liver to shut down and it can have very powerful sedative effects.
It seems another big problem is that products which have been sold from “traditional Chinese medicine” companies have no consistency of dose. A pill from one company may be five times as potent as from another and have vague, if any instructions.
There have been deaths in the past in the US due to it even being used on one occasion. For this reason the FDA has been cracking down on it bigtime since the 1980’s. I don’t know if it is the same in the UK.
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ANSWERS/ANS00572.html
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Chuckles said:
The late author Robert A Heinlein said it best in The Notebook of Lazareth Long: “The only capital crime in the universe is stupidity and the sentence is automatic and carried out without reprieve or appeal.”
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Isn’t that why you have this site and other bad-science sites try to get the word out? To prevent this? Hopefully her death will at least get enough attention to perhaps save others from injury or death from such products. If it gets anyone to think twice and research what is behind “traditional” medicine, that is something. Small consolation to her friends and family i guess.
There are lots of people who, to be honest, I’d feel little sympathy or sadness for if they dropped dead. There are people who have refused to listen to logic for so long that if they did kill themselves with a product it’d be hard not to blame them.
I still think it’s ultimately her fault (let the buyer beward), but that doesn’t mean it’s not a tragic and sad story. the tragity is that nobody got through to her or she choose to not listen to science and reason. Even if she didn’t though, it’s still a small crime for the death penelty. I can’t help but feel for her and those she left behind.
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
DV82XL said:
Yes. That’s it. Too bad that’s not 100% true. Stupidity gets some people in the end. Too often it gets someone else though, like their unvaccinated kids or the idiots who petitioned the local government to stop flouridating the water walk away claiming victory. Nobody dies but a generation has teeth that are about falling out of their head.
It’s not always carried out. Sometimes it’s carried out for a minor offense. Sometimes someone else gets the penalty. That’s life.
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Yes, this stuff is really not good. It’s as powerful a drug as any prescription and it has more side effects and possible dangers then most of them. It also is not standard at all. If you take a pill of this it’s like taking an oxicodon pill that might be anywhere from 1mg to 1000mg and not knowing which, and it may or maynot also have four other drugs mixed in with it. Would you take a medication like that without knowing the dose or contents?
It comes from an herb. Fine but so does heroin and morphine and crack cocaine.
I doubt she would take it or anyone would if they knew everything about it. I bet she saw “herbal” and thought not to even worry.
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March 26th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Oops: I missspoke. Cocaine doesn’t come from an ‘herb’ but it comes from a plant.
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March 26th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
And then all these people go around calling themselves liberals.
Of course, there’s nothing more liberal than taking received wisdom from 5,000 years ago, viciously opposing all attempts to test whether it’s correct or not in the predictions it makes, and blithely waving away anything that’s new.
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March 26th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
That is very sad. If this kind of thing has the FDA or someone else on their tail in the USA and UK and other countries, what about China? I wonder if it is common to have deaths from this kind of thing back in mainland China. It sounds like it might be a lot more avaliable there.
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March 26th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
IrishKel said:
I’m sure it is. When I have heard of people who died outside China from tainted medicine I also remember hearing that many died in China too. The health care there is not very good. Lets not forget something when we hear all about how powerful China is becoming: There are over a billion people overthere and the majority have not experienced their fair share of the economic benefits. China is considered a third world country and there are plenty of people in China who have a lifestyle which would look like hell to you and me. Worse, a lot of the people in the countryside are getting the shaft from industrialization of china. They’re seeing their dirt poor lives get worse from local industrial pollution.
Do you think these people get the benefits of modern medicine? Do you think if one of them drops dead the government goes and investigates? The Chinese government has shown time and time again that it has no concern for the value of life of the peons who aren’t part of the upper ruling class or the party in power. China has more people than they need and it’s no sweat for the Chinese government if someone pops a poison pill and drops dead.
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March 26th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Yeah I’m sure. It is still sad. Every life is worth a real lot to those who are close to the person. I don’t know that this was that stupid a decision. She took what she thought was just an herbal pill for a stomach ache. I would never think that would kill. Maybe it would just not work, but certainly this is not deserved. More blame lies on anyone who markets this stuff or passes around the message that it’s safe.
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March 26th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Sad story. Condolences to her obviously very grieving friends at the terrible and unexpected loss.
Maybe somebody will learn from this. Despite the fact that people make a big deal about the occasions where a modern drug has turned out to cause an unexpected side-effect, these are very rare and usually only a small percent. Industrial countries like my home Canada have the very best, safest, most well safety tested medications avaliable on our store shelves that any population in human history has ever had – of course in other developed countries too.
We seldom appreciate just how lucky we are to know we can take a headache medication and it’ll help our headache and not cause harm. A lot of effort goes into keeping us safe with the meds at our disposal. Maybe someone will see this and come to realize that most herbal and “holistic” and “traditional” crap does not have any of the tests for safety and effectiveness that mainstream meds need to go through to get onto the store shelves in a modern society.
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March 26th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Made me tear up just a little. It comes through in the quotes how much she meant to people and how much potential.
Now I’m really sad.
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March 27th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Good post – I’m glad this story is being covered. Some good comments on this thread too.
For anybody wondering how common this sort of thing is, there’s a site called “What’s The Harm” that details harm that has been wholly or partly caused by ‘alternative thinking’ and there is a section for herbal medicines: http://whatstheharm.net/herbalremedies.html
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March 27th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Just one problem with this anecdotal analysis. It lacks the scientific rigor you claim to love. The fact is 140K people are killed by conventional pharmaceuticals each year. The number for the herbal treatments is around 100.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FKA/is_6_63/ai_78476942
All medicines have risk even herbal ones. Moreover it is foolish to lump herbal remedies all into the same quack basket. There is a reason pharmaceutical companies scour the world looking for interesting plant chemicals. Many medicines are derived from plants, otherwise called ‘herb.s’.
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March 28th, 2008 at 4:22 am
Matt said:
Of course this doesn’t bother to take into account that more people (by several orders of magnitude I’ll warrant) use conventional pharmaceuticals over herbal ones.
No one is questioning that Tetrahydropalmatine effects the body, or that it may properly refined and administered may have a therapeutic effect. However self prescribing, and self administering a product prepared without proper quality controls, and without full knowledge of it’s potential effects is just very very risky. This is true regardless of whether it’s a ‘herbal’ or conventional pharmaceutical.
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March 28th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Matt said:
Well the risks of herbal medicine are generally small. The thing that drbuzz0 said to start off with is that the worst thing that happens in most cases is that they just plain don’t work and someone ends up barking up the wrong tree when they should be headed to a doctor’s office.
The thing about herbal medicine is that if they’re generally safe it’s because it’s nothing to them. They’re just sugar pills with a few chopped up leaves. Nobody gets hurt by that most of the time.
Pharmaceuticals are powerful compounds which have very real effects on the body. For this reason they’re only safe when used properly. Also, there’s an increasing amount of abuse of medication which is an issue onto itself.
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March 28th, 2008 at 11:47 am
My question about the safety of herbs versus pharmasuiticals: Do herbal “remedies” come with dosing instructions, safety information, side effects listed and so on?
When I take a drug otc or prescription I know what I’m getting into and they are required to say any potential dangers. If some people do occasionally die from it, I have knowledge of this. They list the ingredients too and the indications. The pharmacist or doctor can tell me if I’m in a high risk group or if I take other meds that might interact. This means you’re not flying blind.
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March 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Good point. Some pharmaceuticals or otc meds are very very safe and have almost zero risk of dangerous side effects. Then others can have risks but the risks are decided to be small enough and the benefit large enough to accept it. The doctor is supposed to consult you and that is the obvious reason why a lot of things need a doctors perscription. These herbs could be safe/unsafe and it’s not given.
I think most you’d get on the shelves of a drug store would be mostly harmless because people notice when someone drops dead, but the fly by night sources of them not really regulated at all. Does anyone know where she got this?
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March 28th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Okay. I read that article. It states that the 100 killed from herbal remedies it is “usually abuse or over the dose” and says nothing about how many killed from drugs are from abuse or overdose or other improper use.
Then it ends with this, “Conclusion: physicians are approximately 9000 times more dangerous than guns.” That is enough to make anyone realize that this is a sensational anti-establishment and very biased article.
I would love to see breakdown numbers for the deaths from pharmaceuticals.
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March 28th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
DV82XL said:
I wouldn’t bet my life on this assertion. How many people take vitamins for example? Herbs and folk remedies have been used by millions for a long time. In many cases they represent human trials performed over thousands of years.
A good master herbalist program or a study of phyto-medicine or phytopharmacology deals heavily with dosing, drug interactions physiology, biochemistry etc. etc. There is a whole science behind it and there are respected published peer reviewed journals in this area.
It’s simply silly to say that a drug has to be prepped by Merck, rather than grown in your backyard to be effective. As I said earlier, pharmeceuticals heavily rely on plant biochemistry. For goodness sakes, penicillin is basically a mold. I suspect modern pharmacology wouldn’t even exist if not for the herbalist of prior times.
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March 28th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
It’s not the source we are talking about, it’s the lack of proper quality control in manufacturing the product, and the lack of testing, and the lack of proper knowledge in application.
That and the fact that many of these products do not help the problems which they are being taken for, because almost all ‘herbalism’ is a crock. That some of these things have found their way into the general pharmacopoeia does not in any way validate the effectiveness of those that haven’t.
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March 28th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
DV82XL said:
There are plenty of effective treatments that are outside of mainstream medicine. Medicine is a business and some drugs and supplements can not be patented and there is no monetary incentive for them to become part of mainstream medicine. Just try talking candidly to a good doctor about it. Most of them only learn about new treatments through pharmaceutical marketing campaigns.
Getting a treatment protocol through the FDA is an expensive proposition. Thus simple solutions to certain illnesses will never become part of our medical practice. That is why many turn to alternative medicine. Yes there is a lot of deception, but an educated patient can find help.
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March 28th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Matt said:
How ironic to get a statement like this, from a supporter of alternate medicine, in a comment in a thread about a Ph.D. candidate that poisoned herself with this sort of thinking.
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March 28th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Matt said:
Actually I agree with you about part of this. There are effective treatments outside of using drugs, but I don’t think they’re a secret or any kind of thing a drug company could suppress.
There’s a treatment for high cholesterol called “get off your ass and also start eating better” and it is so effective that if people used it to the full possibility we wouldn’t be using nearly as many statins, which are really high profit. You know how they say “When diet and exercise are not enough..” In reality very few people really really push their diet and exercise as much as they could before popping a pill.
Yeah, this isn’t a secret. people like it that way!
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March 28th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Q: Exactly. A lot of the stuff for example in books about what the medical and drug companies “Do not want you to know.” is common sense. Everyone knows basically what is bad and good for them. They might know the finer points but everyone knows sweets and fast food and stuff is just not optimal. Yet people still eat it?
yeah, we could cut down statins a real lot if people would really go all the way with nutrion and exercise first. I will be the first to admit my diet is less than optimal and most people’s are. That’s the reason for it. it would take effort and people like it the way it is. Were all busy and lazy.
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March 29th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Someone mentioned that the stuff she took here was probably gotten through backwater channels and that it has been cracked down in a lot of countries. What I am wondering is what potential dangers there are for the herbal/natural suppliments and treatments you can easily buy in many stores right off the shelf. I have to think they are likely to be safer just because of the fact that if they killed people very often there’d been more crackdown on it. I think more likely they are usually more harmless in most cases they’re neither helpful nor hurtful but just pills full of fluff that do nothing.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 6:24 am
I would never self-prescribe Chinese herbs like Ms Wong did, nor would I randomly stick needles in myself and call it acupuncture. Don’t blame a whole medicinal system for the misapplication and misconceptions that caused harm – that’s not a very rigorous and scientific response.
I’d love to see the western scientific community do more research into TCM, but they seem uninterested and incapable of grasping the fundamental concepts of how TCM works. To test isolated ingredients on a mass scale ignores the principal of holistic medicine which treats each person as an individual. They may share similar symptoms, but the underlying causes may be different. That’s why you need a trained physician to give proper diagnosis, prescribe medicine, and monitor the effects. Especially in a holistic system where the medicine may not have been tested in the same way as western medicine. To then use these medicine in the same way would constitute an abuse. That’s the mistake that Ms Wong made – thinking that if Jin Bu Huan worked for other people it must be safe enough for her too.
Medicine are medicine, and should be treated with respect.
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