On the way there we drove by some apple orchards and guess what - as reported in a previous blog posting, all the apples were neatly covered with brown paper bags which according to the newspaper where I found the original story, all contain dangerous pesticides. So much for eating any more apples here.
But I digress, the issue in this posting is green tea?
An undercover reporter for a "60 Minutes" type TV program here substituted green tea as a urine sample at various hospitals and wouldn't you know it - he was diagnosed with several different ailments. To start the experiment he went to a major public hospital in Beijing for a health check up where he was judged to be heathy and in good shape.
Then he went to several private men's health hospitals and when asked for a urine sample, he gave the clinics a small vial of green tea as a sample.
He was stunned when doctors at a hospital in Shijiazhuang, in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province, told him they found an excessive level of white blood cells in his "urine," indicating that he was suffering prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate gland, and orchitis, swelling in the testicles - hmmm, that sounds serious. A doctor told him that he would need to undergo seven days of treatment, with each day costing 546 yuan (US$86).
At another private hospital in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, a doctor checked the same green tea sample and diagnosed that he had spermatoceles, or cysts near his reproductive organs, and needed immediate surgery, costing 5,000 yuan.
What is even more bizzare is that after the story broke some doctors questioned the reporter's method of using green tea to judge the accuracy of medical tests. They told the Shanghai Daily newspaper it was very "unprofessional" for the reporter to use green tea as sample. How's that for a great response .
Still others said the journalist shouldn't have set out to trap hospitals because a doctor should not have to worry about whether a urine sample is authentic. Otherwise, they said, it would be a waste of medical resources to verify samples.
"Equipment is designed to check biochemical indicators like white cell counts in urine or blood, not for whether the sample is urine or green tea," said Dr Wang Guisong from Shanghai's Renji Hospital.
There is something here that I must be missing but as most expats say TIC - This is China.
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