There is no licensing of the products little or no policing of items
Posted in General on 24. Jul, 2010
There is no licensing of the products, little or no policing of items on sale, and no national reporting system for recording deaths, illness or other adverse effects. Leading toxicology specialists yesterdaycalled for a licensing system for Chinese mixtures, which have been found to contain arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals as well as steroids and highly toxic plants and herbs.Side-effects that the Guy’s unit (formerly the National Poisons Unit) has identified include heavy-metal poisoning, liver disease and permanent skin discoloration following the use of herbal tanning preparations.The booming alternative remedies business is believed to be worth pounds 200m a year. Her death is being investigated by the National Medical Toxicology Unit at Guy’s Hospital, London, which has handled more than 600 cases of alternative remedies linked to adverse reactions.
The deaths come amid growing concern about the contents of some of cures and treatments being sold in the UK. The other, a 28-year-old woman, took Chinese herbs for eczema and also died of liver failure.
One, a 32-year-old married Nottingham man, died from liver failure after taking a remedy known as eternal life. “But after this ‘Jocks and Geordies’ thing anything might happen.”. TWO people are believed to have died recently after taking Chinese herbal remedies. There’s no substitute for really funny stories.”Mr Donald said he had not yet decided whether to respond to the “Jocks and Geordies” jest in the next issue of Viz “I was going to leave it,” he said. “There were fewer comics and computer games hadn’t been invented. We can still hold our own against other comics, but the main opposition is on a screen these days.”Viz is pretty good, but it’s past its peak It used to be hilarious. Now I think it goes over the top.There are only so many laughs you can get from four- letter words.
It peaked in the early Sixties with a weekly sale of more than two million, now down to about 130,000. “In those days children watched much less TV,” said Mr Heggie. I imagine him sitting there in his Dickensian office in Dundee, covered in cobwebs. We get on great with the writers and cartoonists at DC Thomson – it’s just the old fogeys upstairs who can’t take a joke.”Both the Dandy and Viz have seen better days. Viz, a bi-monthly which was produced for the first six years of its life by Mr Donald, 35, and his brother from a bedroom at their parents’ Newcastle home, had an average sale for January-June of 527,030, half the figure of five years ago.Dandy, founded in December 1937, has fallen farther, but from a much greater height.