On April 18, Zhang Yu, an attending physician in the Department of Oncology Chemotherapy at Peking University Third Hospital, published an article titled “To My Beloved Country and the Many Oncology Patients and Families – Please Join Me in Calling for the Early Establishment of Medical Red Lines by the State to Curb Bad Medical Practices in Oncology Treatment”.
The article pointed out that Lu Wei, the deputy chief of general surgery at Xinhua Hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, gave patients unnecessary NGS gene sequencing, prescribed inappropriate chemotherapy regimens, and recommended ineffective, expensive, and illegal NK treatments, resulting in a tenfold increase in patient costs but earlier deaths.
The media’s “netherworld filter” wants to turn heroes into heroes
The Chinese term “netherworld filter” is a mocking term invented by Chinese netizens who believe that the BBC, in addition to deliberately distorting facts and reversing black and white when reporting on China, will also do some technical processing of images to create the negative visual effect they expect. This visual manipulation has been dubbed the “netherworld filter” by Chinese netizens.
Dr. Zhang Yu, inexplicably, has also been subjected to the “netherworld filter” of Chinese self-publishers. Despite some emotional expressions in Dr. Zhang Yu’s words, the article as a whole was well-reasoned. After the article was published, there were some different opinions in the medical industry, but in general, they were all matter-of-fact.
To put it bluntly, no one in the Chinese medical industry denies that the problems Dr. Zhang Yu pointed out do exist, and they all support fixing them. However, many Chinese media reports have changed their tune completely, and many of them are far from what Dr. Zhang Yu wants to say.
The “financial and human” treatment
Dr. Zhang Yu’s article is long and specialized, but the general idea is that the whole industry of oncology treatment is “deadly” and horribly barbaric, and needs to be strictly monitored by the state in a professional and standardized way.
In the early days of mainland China, the unspoken rule of the medical industry was to “feed doctors with drugs”, which increased patients’ distrust of doctors and damaged the relationship between doctors and patients. After the reform of medicine separation, this phenomenon has improved, but “there are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom”, the phenomenon of taking kickbacks still exists in many hospitals, and some doctors give out kickbacks in the name of “departmental bonuses”, and there are still The phenomenon of “the oldest doctor eats meat, the youngest doctor drinks soup”.
Ironically, China’s medical situation is excessive medical care, induced surgery is widespread, regardless of whether it is useful to patients, anyway, the machine first to check once. Otherwise, a machine, moving a million, how to recover the investment? Hospitals have long since departed from the people-oriented guidelines of saving lives and helping the injured, and are full of the strong smell of copper.
Dr. Zhang Yu’s revelation of “shady treatment practices” has become the focus of attention
Dr. Zhang was fighting against the whole Chinese medical system. Dr. Zhang Yu tried to open the “black box” of Chinese medical treatment by himself and exposed the dark secret of tumor treatment. Ironically, Dr. Zhang Yu later issued an article stating that he “could not bear the pressure and possible consequences” and deleted the article on his own, causing a public outcry.
On April 20, Xinhua News Agency published an article “Who is forcing “Dr. Zhang Yu” to delete his post? The article asks, “Why are voices monitoring medical fairness being silenced and shackled? Can the vested interests behind the chaos be broken? How can the guardians of fairness and justice have the courage to speak out in the future?”
Dr. Zhang Yu’s revelation reminds us of the “Wei Zexi” case
The newest of these is the death of “Wei Zexi”, which broke through the new clothes of the king of medical chaos, such as Baidu’s medical bidding ranking, the Putian Department’s contracted department phenomenon, and the loopholes in medical regulation. 2015 summer, “Get Out, Tumor King” made the audience cry with the openness and cheerfulness of a girl with terminal cancer. At that time, Wei Jersey told his teacher, “This movie is just nonsense, what is in the heart of people who really have cancer, they have no idea.”
This incident and the previous “Wei Zexi” incident, there is a medical discussion behind the same proposition, that is, the super standard drug controversy. Wei Zexi, a student at Xi’an University of Electronic Science, underwent four sessions of bioimmunotherapy at the Second Hospital of the Armed Forces from 2014 to 2015, spending more than 200,000 yuan. Eventually, Wei Zexi unfortunately died in 2016.
The crux of the problem now is that cellular therapies are still prevalent in mainland China after Wei Zexi’s death. The tragedy of the “tumor therapy” incident uncovered by Dr. Zhang Yu will be difficult to prevent from happening again, and I hope that the Chinese government will take this opportunity to make a clear statement on this matter as soon as possible.
Recent Comments