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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| No animals harmed in making Chinese skin cream. Humans? Well... |
| 2005-09-14 |
| The Guardian: salt as required. EFL A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered. Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about". It is unclear whether any of the "aesthetic fillers" such as collagen available in the UK or on the internet are supplied by the company, which cannot be identified for legal reasons. It is also unclear whether collagen made from prisoners' skin is in the research stage or is in production. However, the Guardian has learned that the company has exported collagen products to the UK in the past. An agent told customers it had also exported to the US and European countries, and that it was trying to develop fillers using tissue from aborted foetuses. When formally approached by the Guardian, the agent denied the company was using skin harvested from executed prisoners. However, he had already admitted it was doing precisely this during a number of conversations with a researcher posing as a Hong Kong businessman. The Press Complaints Commission's code of practice permits subterfuge if there is no other means of investigating a matter of public interest. The agent told the researcher: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "bio tech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China. He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. "In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this," he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: "The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile." |
| Posted by:Jackal |
| #5 I don't know. I was under the impression that Heliongjiang was kinda-sorta left behind in the big capitalist boom, sorta like the rust belt here in the 70's and 80's, and wasn't exactly known as a high-tech research center in the country. |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2005-09-14 23:27 |
| #4 Like olden times when certain spies, assassins, or assorted bad guyz would impersonate an enemy by de facto skinning him and later wearing his face.I'll bite, doesn't Socie-Comie Progressivism imply that society was suppos to positively evolve beyond such primitive, base acts, instead of status quo and regressing backward. |
| Posted by: JOsephMendiola 2005-09-14 23:09 |
| #3 Executed convict penis much more powerful (and tasty) than tiger penis. |
| Posted by: Hung Lo 2005-09-14 20:23 |
| #2 Cosmetics makes sense. Not much of a mark-up in lampshades.... |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-09-14 19:41 |
| #1 The agent told the researcher: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "bio tech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China. He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. "In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this," he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: "The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile." The Good Earth? |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2005-09-14 15:40 |