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Title: Tainted Chinese baby milk powder 'causes baby girls to grow breasts'
Source:
Telegraph
URL Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor ... aby-girls-to-grow-breasts.html
Published: Aug 13, 2010
Author: Peter Foster
Post Date: 2010-08-13 15:31:44 by abraxas
Keywords: None
Views: 75
Comments: 1
Tainted Chinese baby milk powder 'causes baby girls to grow breasts' Health authorities in China have ordered an investigation into claims that a batch of powdered baby milk has caused children as young as four months old to grow breasts. By Peter Foster in Beijing Published: 11:59AM BST 10 Aug 2010 China's dairy industry has only just recovered from the 2008 tainted milk episode which saw six babies die and 300,000 others become seriously ill as a result of milk powder contaminated with melamine Photo: GETTY IMAGES Tests were ordered on infant formula made by the NASDAQ-listed company Synutra after reports surfaced in China's state media that three children fed on the formula had entered into precocious puberty. Synutra, one of China's largest producers of baby milk, issued a statement saying it had "100 per cent confidence" in its product and promising to co-operate with any investigation to restore consumer confidence. "We have worked closely with state authorities, including the Chinese Dairy Association and the office of food safety, to test product samples, to prove that these claims are false. We expect that the results of these tests should be made public soon," added Liang Zhang, Synutra's chief executive. Declaring its products "safe", the company said the media reports were inaccurate and misleading and that its milk had passed all government tests for hormone dosage. However, the company's share price fell 27pc on Monday in response to the news. China's dairy industry has only just recovered from the 2008 tainted milk episode which saw six babies die and 300,000 others become seriously ill as a result of milk powder contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical used to give milk the appearance of a higher protein content. The scandal seriously damaged public confidence in China's food safety and the threat of a repeat scandal was generating thousands of hits on Chinese websites on Tuesday, despite there only being three alleged cases. A fourth possible case was claimed by a Beijing local newspaper on Tuesday after the father of a one-year-old girl claimed in an internet post that his child had been diagnosed as being prematurely pubescent five days ago after drinking Synutra formula. China's government, which was accused in some quarters of covering up the 2008 scandal in order to avoid embarrassment during the Beijing Olympic Games, moved to reassure the public it was acting swiftly this time. "The Ministry of Health had attached great importance to this issue," a ministry spokesman Deng Haihua told a news conference in Beijing at which a separate investigation into the possible causes of the infants' condition was also announced. The original cases centred on three children living in three different towns around Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, in central China, who were brought to hospital last month after they showed abnormal physical developments. According to an investigation by Beijing's "Health Times" newspaper, laboratory tests on the children showed levels of estradiol, a female sex hormone, and another hormone, lactogen, were between three and seven times expected levels. "The amount of hormones in the babies definitely means there's a problem," Yang Qin, the chief physician in the child care department at the Hubei Maternity and Children's Hospital, told the paper last weekend. Another doctor cautioned that a full analysis of the milk powder would be required before any links between the milk and the disease could be drawn. "Precocious puberty is a very complex disease, we cannot conclude that milk powder has problems just because three children drank the same brand and also had the same symptoms," said Professor Yao Hui, Wuhan Children's Hospital endocrinology specialist. "The only way is to test the milk powder, to see if it contains estrogen, in order to know the truth," she added.
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#1. To: abraxas (#0)
i could make a comment about various political/pagan circles and the vatican (same thing, really) tittering excitedly about such a development, but that would be Wrong, and surely would amount to poking The Fat Evil Pig Thingy with a sharp stick.... ...but i have never been known to do such things, and am not about to start now.
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