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Chinese remedy plagiarized
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A TRADITIONAL Chinese remedy which has shown promise in treating cancer has been plagiarized by an American drug producer, the Guangzhou Daily quoted a Chinese drug official as saying on Wednesday.
The loss presumably would be two billion yuan (US$0.24 billion), the largest medicine plagiary case ever happened in China, according to Li Jiansheng, the director with Beijing new drug research centre at China Cancer Fund.
Li, who has devoted more than 20 years in inventing the remedy, said the remedy was plagiarized by an American expert.
Back in May 1999, Nada Zein, an American expert of genetic engineering with GDF, an research institute under FDA, told Li she wanted to co-operate with him to introduce his medicine to the American market. Li was very delighted with the idea. He then gave her 300 grammes of semi-finished medicine.
On March 1 this year, Nada published a paper in the Wall Street Journal elaborating the medical mechanism of “Gleevec”, an effective new drug for treating cancer, and said her company would soon introduce the medicine into the market.
But to Li's surprise, “the medical mechanism is almost the same as the remedy I invented. It's plain plagirism”.
An official with the National Chinese Medicine Administration commented, “Every medical practitioner should be alert to protect the intellectual property rights of Chinese medicine.”(Alfred Zhang)
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