RenalWEB links to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) refuting the weak excuses a delegation from China offered at a news conference on Monday concerning the contaminated heparin ingredients a Chinese producer supplied to heparin suppliers around the world. Presumably Chinese spokesperson Jin Shaohong, deputy director-general of the China National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products is flying home in disgrace after offering only finger pointing and blame shifting, instead of apologies on Monday.
The MIT teams led by Professor Ram Sasisekharan of MIT figured out how to test for the Chinese contaminant - oversulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS) - after identifying its chemical structure, and in a second study showed exactly how OSCS can kill by causing a severe allergic reaction. The papers were published online in Nature Biotechnology and the New England Journal of Medicine, respectively.
Dialyzors trust their lives to the idea that medications are what they're suppose to be but it's not just medications. We trust our lives to everyone involved in the provision of dialysis. The machines have to beep when they're suppose to beep. Artificial kidneys - the dialyzers - are suppose to be sterile without any toxic elements. When a 4x4 bandage says it's sterile, we assume it's sterile. When soap says it's antibacterial we assume it's antibacterial. We assume that povidone-iodine is povidone-iodine. There is no way for those being dialyzed to confirm if any of this is true - dialyzors have to trust that there are checks in place; we assume that there is a system in place to ensure quality. We trust that people are doing their jobs and if people do their jobs we trust the system ensures the result we want.
In this case because of a chain of purchase decisions we ended up trusting our lives to anonymous Chinese pig part suppliers, which is not something any sane person would choose to do, but this was done in the name of economic efficiency all the way down the supply chain. And generally I imagine everyone did their job - shuffling the proper paperwork and trying to save a couple cents at each manufacturing step. But there was a flaw. The system relied on anonymous Chinese pig part suppliers. That was the system, trust anonymous Chinese pig part suppliers.
I know we can do better than that.
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