sarge-m's Blog

Deaths uncounted in China's tainted milk scandal By CHARLES HUTZLER (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press November 15, 2008 1:49 PM EST LITI VILLAGE, China

- Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10. Her grandmother wrapped the 9-month-old in a wool blanket. Her father handed the body to village men for burial by a muddy creek. The doctors and family never knew why she got sick. A day later, state media reported that the type of infant formula she drank had been adulterated with an industrial chemical. Yet the deaths of Xiaokai and at least four other babies are not included in China's official death toll from its worst food safety scare in years. The Health Ministry's count stands at only three deaths. The stories of these uncounted babies suggest that China's tainted milk scandal has exacted a higher human toll than the government has so far acknowledged.

Without an official verdict on the deaths, families worry they will be unable to bring lawsuits and refused compensation. So far, nobody is suggesting large numbers of deaths are being concealed. But so many months passed before the scandal was exposed that it's likely more babies fell sick or died than official figures reflect. Beijing's apparent reluctance to admit a higher toll is reinforcing perceptions that the authoritarian government cares more about tamping down criticism than helping families.

Lawyers, doctors and reporters have said privately that authorities pressured them to not play up the human cost or efforts to get compensation from the government or Sanlu, the formula maker. "It's hard to say how the government will handle this matter," said Zhang Xinkui, a Beijing-based lawyer amassing evidence of the contamination for a possible lawsuit. "There may be many children who perhaps died from drinking Sanlu powdered milk or perhaps from a different cause. But there's no system in place to find out." In the weeks since Xiaokai's death, her father and his older brother have talked to lawyers and beseeched health officials, with no result. "My heart is in pain," said her father, Li Xiaoquan, a short, taciturn farmer with hooded eyes. From a corner of his farmhouse courtyard in central China's wheat and corn flatlands, he pulls a worn green box that once held apples and is now stuffed with empty pink wrappers of the Sanlu Infant Formula Milk Powder that Xiaokai nursed on. "We think someone, the company, should compensate us." In coal-mining country 450 miles to the northwest, Tian Xiaowei waits for his wife to leave the newly built house before removing five small photos of a wide-eyed baby boy from a brown plastic document folder. "She breaks down when she sees them," Tian said. The photos are the only mementos left of year-old Tian Jin, who died in August. "I want these people who poisoned the milk powder to receive the severest punishment under law. I want an explanation and I want consolation for my dead child," said Tian, a broad-shouldered apple farmer and part-time truck driver. "I feel like we could die from regret. If we knew that it was contaminated, we would never have fed him that."

Since September, when the scandal was first reported, Beijing has said that Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co., the dairy, knew as early as last year that its products were tainted with melamine and that company and local officials first tried to cover it up. \

The government has promised free medical treatment to the 50,000 children sickened, and unspecified compensation to them and families of the dead. The Health Ministry, which is coordinating the government's response, declined to answer questions about the compensation plan and whether it was investigating deaths and illnesses not yet counted by the government. Melamine, a chemical used as a flame retardant and binding agent to make cooking utensils and industrial coatings, is rich in nitrogen. As such, it makes an attractive low-cost additive to milk and other foods; nitrogen registers as protein on many routine tests. Though melamine is not believed harmful in tiny amounts, higher concentrations produce kidney stones, which can block the ducts that carry urine from the body, and in serious cases can cause kidney failure. All eight babies who died were diagnosed with kidney failure, according to the families, medical records or state media accounts. All also supposedly drank Sanlu infant formula or powdered milk.

 The fathers of Li Xiaokai and Tian Jin both wave inch-thick sheaves of medical reports and tests from their children's stays in hospitals. Xiaokai, a twin older than her sister Xiaoyan by three minutes, was fed with Sanlu formula while the younger girl nursed on breast milk because their mother did not have enough for both, family members said. An ultrasound examination of Xiaokai's kidneys at the Zhengzhou Children's Hospital on Aug. 21 found a stone in each kidney that was about the size of a small marble and 2 1/2 times larger than what doctors consider a critical threshold. Tian Xiaowei, the apple farmer, sent bags of Sanlu infant formula to a government laboratory in September. The Xi'an Product Quality Supervision Institute's report, dated Oct. 8, found melamine levels of 1,748 milligrams per kilogram, more than 800 times the government-set limit.

Then there's Wang Siyu, the daughter of an accountant and proprietor of an Internet cafe in the central city of Shangqiu. Siyu was fed Sanlu products from birth and developed recurring kidney problems in May last year, at age 3, said her mother, Li Songmei. Twice hospitalized, she was taken off Sanlu milk and started to recover, only to fall ill again when the family began to give her Sanlu products, Li said. Sick for a third time and swollen, she died of kidney failure at the Zhengzhou Children's Hospital on May 2, said Li. "Ever since she was born, she had been using Sanlu milk. Only when she felt sick and couldn't eat did she stop taking Sanlu," said Li. Others among the five include an infant in far western Xinjiang province, whose story was posted on the provincial government Web site, and a 6-month-old boy in southeastern Jiangxi province, reported by the New Legal Daily. A reporter who worked on the article and would give only his surname, Liu, said the newspaper was careful not to blame Cai Cong's death on Sanlu formula because "the local government has not yet reached a verdict." Medical experts say kidney stones in infants are rare.

 Doctors in several parts of China first noticed a rise in cases in the past two years. Pediatric urologist Feng Dongchuan tried to sound an alarm, posting an item on his blog in July about a spike in cases at his hospital in the central city of Xuzhou and in nearby Nanjing city. Feng pinpointed infant formula as the likely cause. Feng at first refused requests for interviews, then responded in a terse e-mail: "The chance for infants or small children to come down with kidney stones is very small, and having stones that obstruct both kidneys is even more rare."

Like the others, the Li family grew distressed when Xiaokai started to become fussy in July. With their two-acre farm in Liti Village, her parents never had much money and already had a child, a son. But they wanted a larger family, bucking the one-child family planning limits. Xiaokai was "the more active" of the twins, said her 70-year-old grandmother, Li Xuan. By August, Xiaokai was running a high fever, unabated by ever higher doses of medicine. Alarmed after she stopped eating and urinating, the family took her to the nearby Runnan county hospital on Aug. 18. The doctors diagnosed kidney failure and rushed her overnight by ambulance to Zhengzhou Children's Hospital, three hours away and the best in Henan province. "They knew right away," said the father, Li. Xiaokai was run through tests and put on intravenous solutions to try to shrink the kidney stones. Unable to stay with her or afford a hotel, Li and his mother slept on the pavement outside the hospital. After five days, the hospital said it could do no more. "The doctors wouldn't operate because they said 'she's too small,'" said Li. They suggested taking Xiaokai to Beijing or Shanghai. Hospital officials declined comment and refused to make Xiaokai's doctor available. The hospital stay in Zhengzhou cost 7,331 yuan, or $1,070 - about a year's cash income for the family - and they had already borrowed money to pay for Xiaokai's care.

So Li brought Xiaokai home to die. They took her to a traditional medicine doctor in the village, who gave her an herbal medicine and confirmed the grim prognosis. "The old doctor told us 'the child will die in 10 to 18 days,'" Li said. Early on Sept. 10 while it was still dark, the grandmother called Li into the side room where she and Xiaokai slept. "Her stomach was puffy" - a sign of kidney failure - "and she wasn't breathing," he said. In many parts of north China, the death of a child is considered a misfortune that can bring bad luck on a family and is best suppressed. Accordingly, Li Haiqin, a cousin, and three other men took Xiaokai to a creek on the far side of the village fields. They put a brick in the blanket with the body and placed it in a shallow hole under a path between rows of poplar trees. Then they walked back in silence beneath a gray dawn and a light rain. No close family members were there and none was told where the grave is.

 Xiaokai's family says Beijing had waived regular inspections of Sanlu because its quality controls were said to be excellent. "The government should shoulder its responsibility. This was a national brand, inspection-exempt products," said Xiaokai's uncle, Li Shenyi. Since the death, Li Shenyi approached the Runnan county Health Bureau to classify Xiaokai's death as caused by tainted formula. "They said the upper levels (of government) were working on it," he said. The county health bureau referred calls to its supervisors in Zhumadian city, who said ultimately it was up to Beijing. "Right now, the Health Ministry has no clear explanation on how the victim's families should be compensated," said a Ms. Shang at the Zhumadian Health Bureau's medical affairs office. "Nobody knows."

This whole week, I have not received any email alerts when someone replies to a comment I have made.  Is anyone else having this trouble?

Does anyone use Internet Explorer 7?  I know many use Firefox.  I am having a small issue with IE7, just an annoyance factor.  Whenever I am here at this site and I use the middle mouse button to open a page in a new tab, sometimes it does it twice.  This does not happen anywhere else, just the Fox 2 blogs.

 

Tabbing is important to me as I have dial up and I can open different blogs while I am still reading the first so I don't have to wait for them to load.

Virus scan is OK.  Let me know if this happens to you.  Let me know if there is a workaround.

Sarge.

I am considering a Satellite internet service through Dish network.  I am tired of this dial up crap.  It sucks azzhole secretion.

Anyone here have satellite internet?  Am I making a mistake?  It is almost a done deal.

I will actually save money by getting rid of phone line and isp and switching service from directv.  I will pay less than I am now and get high speed internet and more channels of tv than I currently get to boot.

How is the service?  Any problems besides sunspots and storms?

Please let me know,  I haven't been here much this week because of phone line problems causing a very slow connection.

Thanks in advance.

Sarge.

 

Happy new year everyone.  Here I am with no electricity again.  I didn't even get to drink my coffee yet when it went out. I had just logged on here to read the blogs when it went out.  Kinda scary as the power spiked up and down, thought it might fry the puter. I have lived here for a little over three months and this is the second time I have lost power.  I just heard on Fox 2 my area is getting the worst of the snow storm.  Not to worry, I have a generator and run the whole house off it.  It happend around 6am today.  Still, I had to go out to the pole barn in the dark and I got all covered in snow.  Generator is not automatic, I have to physically start it.  I guess I will have to venture out later for more gas.  I have about a 16 hour supply in the tank.  I always keep a full gas can in case this happens.  I am glad I did.

Are you without power?  I wonder if this is local (I think it may be)

Any way, Happy no power everyone, Sarge.

 

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

I can't believe all the snow we had a week ago is gone!

Now, I will tell you I hate winter and cold but I do like a white Christmas.

It did snow a little bit here last night, but it is a dusting and won't take much to melt it off.

We have less then an inch.

It doesn't look good for us to have a white Christmas.

What do you think?  Do you wish we had a white Christmas?

How much snow do you have?  I don't mean ugly snow like brown piles of it, I mean nice clean, virgin like snow.

Let me know how much and where.

Merry Christmas from, Sarge.

I think that the Fox website should change the settings in this forum to allow comments in a persons blog by default.

This would help the newcomers post properly and expose all "Drive by" bloggers.

Are you tired of all these posts with comments not being allowed?

What do you think?  Should we ask to have this done?  Do you agree with me?

Please post Yea or Nay and I will send this on to them for consideration.

If you don't agree, thats O.K. too, let me know why.

Either way, let me know your thoughts.

Sarge.

Hi everyone, I want to let you all know I am moving to Imlay City on Sunday.

No high speed internet there either.  I will have to wait a couple of weeks for a phone line.

See ya later.

Sarge.

Bush Losing 'Fast Track' Trade Powers By JIM ABRAMS (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press June 29, 2007 7:35 PM EDT WASHINGTON - President Bush loses his power Saturday to seal "fast track" trade agreements without intervention from Congress, where Democrats blame recent deals for sending U.S. jobs abroad. Since 1975, only one other president, Bill Clinton, has been stripped of that trade promotion authority, designed to speed the reduction of trade barriers and open new markets with other countries. Bush won't get it back again, and the next president might not either. House Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, whose Ways and Means Committee handles trade policy, said in a written statement Friday that their legislative priorities "do not include the renewal of fast track authority." "Before that debate can even begin, we must expand the benefits of globalization to all Americans," they said. In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he had other pressing trade issues, such as extending relief to trade-hit American workers. "I have always said that it is more important to get trade promotion authority done right than to get it done fast." Rather than promoting new free trade accords, the government should concentrate on rewriting old deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, going after countries such as China that manipulate their currencies, strengthening product safety and pushing anti-sweatshop legislation, said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Congress on Friday to renew Bush's trade promotion authority. Without it, she said, "America will lose an important diplomatic tool that has proven essential to bringing foreign leaders to the negotiating table and advancing our nation's broader foreign policy interests." Rangel got a similar pitch in a letter from U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. "More than 100 bilateral trade negotiations are currently under way among our trading partners," she wrote. "It is important that the United States not sit on the sidelines as other countries lock in new preferential trading arrangements with our competitors." Democrats say they support expanded trade as long as it's fair to American workers and doesn't exploit developing countries. They complain that Bush pushed too many trade deals at the expense of worker rights and environmental protections. Fast track authority, which dates back to the Ford administration in 1975, gives the president the right to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can accept or reject, but cannot amend. Every president since then has enjoyed it, although the law lapsed between 1994 and 2002, when Democrats suspicious of trade agreements joined with Republicans hostile to the Clinton administration in opposing its renewal. The revival of the law in 2002 came only after Republicans agreed to Democratic demands to expand a program assisting U.S. workers hurt by foreign trade. The expiration of fast track won't affect four outstanding bilateral trade pacts that Congress must consider before they take effect. Negotiations with Peru and Colombia are finished, the United States and Panama signed a deal Thursday, and the free trade accord with South Korea is to be signed in Washington on Saturday, just before Bush's authority expires. U.S. and South Korean negotiators cleared their final hurdle Friday when the Koreans acceded to new U.S. guidelines demanded by Democratic lawmakers calling for stricter labor and environmental standards. Democrats reached a broad agreement with the Bush administration last month that worker rights and the environment will be core parts of future free trade agreements. That improved prospects for congressional action on several of the accords, although there are still sticking points, such as violence against labor leaders in Colombia and South Korea's restrictions on U.S. auto imports. The top Republican on the Ways and Means panel, Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, noted that since Bush took office in 2001, the United States has implemented 10 free trade agreements with countries such as Australia, Bahrain, and Chile, and that the U.S. trade deficit with those countries has fallen by $7.3 billion. He and other Republicans warned that without fast track, countries leery of congressional tinkering won't come to the negotiating table. "We risk losing market share around the world," said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif. But Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., argued that "trade agreements have given us the largest trade deficits in human history." Last year the U.S. trade deficit reached $836 billion. --- On the Net: Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/ Office of U.S. Trade Representative: http://www.ustr.gov/

I have met quite a few people here in this forum.  I can say a lot of them are Libertarians like myself.

It is a shame that we the people have to vote Democrat or Republican.  We Libertarians know that one of them will win, and can't vote for a Libertarian because our vote will be wasted.

What can we do to increase the Libertarian parties power?

I know money is the number one object.

I am curious.  Lets take a poll to see how many Libertarians there are.  Are we being under represented?

I know this is not a professional poll, but we can use the average numbers from this post to get a general idea.