Chinese Corp.Denies Haitian Poison Report id PAA17725; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 15:05:02 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source: David E. Volk China Co. Denies Poison Report By The Associated Press September 30, 1997 Filed at 7:11 a.m. EDT BEIJING (AP) -- A Chinese company today denied that it supplied a tainted chemical used in fever medicine that killed at least 80 Haitian children. The children took an over-the-counter cough syrup containing glycerin contaminated with diethylene glycol, a chemical usually used in lacquer and anti-freeze. CBS reported Sunday on ``60 Minutes'' that the glycerin had been traced to SinoChem International Chemicals Co., a state-owned Chinese firm, through European companies. A SinoChem official said today there was ``no evidence'' that his firm supplied the tainted glycerin and the case required further investigation. ``We sell raw materials to other countries, and other companies make products after processing and sell them to other countries. This has no relation to us,'' said the official, who refused to give his name or title. The report surfaced as officials in China and the United States try to minimize controversy before Chinese President Jiang Zemin's state visit to Washington in late October. Officials at China's Foreign Ministry declined comment Monday. The tainted drugs were sold between December 1995 and June 1996, causing brain damage, kidney failure and distended abdomens in dozens of children, many of whom were treated at hospitals in Florida. A lawsuit filed in March in Miami on behalf of 45 of the children charges that Vos B.V. of the Netherlands and subsidiary Helm A.G. of Germany were negligent for shipping the tainted glycerin to the Haitian company that produced the cough syrup. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated the poisonings at the request of the World Health Organization. CDC officials initially said they did not know where the tainted glycerin came from. CBS said SinoChem got the glycerin from another Chinese manufacturer, then sold it abroad, certifying it as 98 percent pure. According to the report, SinoChem and Chinese authorities have refused for the past 13 months to tell the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who manufactured the glycerin. At the time of the children's deaths, a CDC official said the case was the fourth-largest outbreak of diethylene glycol poisoning. CBS said that in previous poisonings, diethylene glycol was found to have been substituted for glycerin in medicine because it cost about half as much. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-10.01.97-15:05:03-11896