Chinese smuggling powdered baby flesh capsules?

[bushbush]

Fine
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/05/08/1333.aspx

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Placenta is a by-product of the birth process, like many other kinds of tissues that human bodies dispose of. They are not parts of a living human body as flesh, as in this case which the pills are supposedly made of.

Again, I really can't see how you can conclude that there is a "well-attested history" of using human body parts. The only reference in Chinese medicine was an obscure mentioning in a book written a thousand years ago.

In fact, modern medicine uses far more human body parts to cure people. Think about organ transplants and stem cell research, which can be gruesome and controversial.

This story is sad one if it is true, but we have to wait for the investigations to finish to make the conclusion. Thus far, you have not offered any evidence that traditional Chinese medicine supports using baby flesh to make pills. Therefore, I think you jumping to the conclusion that this practice is somehow part of Chinese culture is wrong.

[Exarch]

Fine
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/05/08/1333.aspx

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

zi he che is placenta; i don't know about you but i was awake during anatomy class and i'm pretty sure babies aren't placenta.

Secondly, you're all assuming traditional chinese pharmaceuticals are unregulated; practically every herb, mineral, animal part has been exhaustively documented and investigated for decades. D'ye think the World Health Organisation somehow overlooked something like 'human babies' whilst filing their reports and continued along their merry way? And that's not even getting into the sorts of strict regulation many authorities have when it comes to non allopathic medications.

btw, for things like placenta, they go through factory procedures to clean the tissues and most importantly, it's not like anyone can sell/buy human placenta from the hospital or from the village or anywhere. There are biohazard issues at risk here y'know. And before ppl start going on an anti Traditional Chinese Medicine crusade, i'd like to remind them that if it wasn't for Qing Hao (artemisinin), malaria would be even more of than it is today, without Chinese pharmaceuticals.

Finally, i never thought sinophobic propaganda would ever stoop so low as to make the claim that 'Chinese people eat babies' but life is full of surprises, apparently. And also, isn't it funny how the accusers have so far offered no concrete proof except innuendo to support their claims. This is of course, typical of sinophobes and closet racists.

[Intranetusa]

Lol, when did i say anything about eating corpses? The issue is use of human body parts in Chinese traditional mediciine.Obscure in what way?
...There are primary sources from both the past and present of such practices in China and not just with small groups or outcasts.

If there are so many sources out there then show me a source? Your main claim is that it is popular in Chinese history to eat corpses or eat human body parts. You've provided absolutely no sources to support that ridiculous assertion.

As BushBush have stated, some people in Europe used to eat corpses and some doctors used body parts in medicine.

"The instructions specifically called for the "cadaver of a reddish man ... of around 24 years old," who had been "dead of a violent death but not an illness" and then laid out "exposed to the moon rays for one day and one night" with, he noted, "a clear sky." In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, recipes for remedies like this, which provided instructions on how to process human bodies, were almost as common as the use of herbs, roots and bark."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...604548,00.html

So according to your logic, cannibalism is popular in European history and rooted in European medicine too?

[Tiberios]

Quite disturbing if true.

[Exarch]

considering the incredible lack of evidence for such claims, and the heavy reliance on innuendo, it's clear that this is yet another case of hyped up journalism aka bull .

oh and btw
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...ngestion_N.htm

what crazy, amoral soulless, inhuman, cannibals, these white people are!

[Condottiere 40K]

What's more interesting is who would believe these claims enough to take that kind of prescription.

While I don't know if Chinese herbal medication actually works, I've heard enough anecdotal claims to make it a worthwhile alternative, despite some of the weird ingredients. However, cannibalism is one line a lot of people won't step over.