From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Med...5

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Another problem is that finding traces of diethylene glycol in decomposing bodies is difficult at best, medical experts say. Nonetheless, an Argentine pathologist who has studied diethylene glycol poisonings helped develop a test for the poison in exhumed bodies. Seven of the first nine bodies tested showed traces of the poison, Panamanian authorities said.
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With the rainy season returning, though, the exhumations are about to end. Dr. José Vicente Pachar, director of Panama’s Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, said that as a scientist he would like a final count of the dead. But he added, “I should accept the reality that in the case of Panama we are not going to know the exact number.”
Local prosecutors have made some arrests and are investigating others connected to the case, including officials of the import company and the government agency that mixed and distributed the cold medicine. “Our responsibilities are to establish or discover the truth,” said Dimas Guevara, the homicide investigator guiding the inquiry.
But prosecutors have yet to charge anyone with actually making the counterfeit glycerin. And if the Panama investigation unfolds as other inquiries have, it is highly unlikely that they ever will.
A Suspect Factory
Panamanians wanting to see where their toxic nightmare began could look up the Web site of the company in Hengxiang, China, that investigators in four countries have identified as having made the syrup — the Taixing Glycerine Factory. There, under the words “About Us,” they would see a picture of a modern white building nearly a dozen stories tall, adorned by three arches at the entrance. The factory, the Web site boasts, “can strictly obey the contract and keep its word.”
But like the factory’s syrup, all is not as it seems.
There are no tall buildings in Hengxiang, a country town with one main road. The factory is not certified to sell any medical ingredients, Chinese officials say. And it looks nothing like the picture on the Internet. In reality, its chemicals are mixed in a plain, one-story brick building.
The factory is in a walled compound, surrounded by small shops and farms. In the spring, nearby fields of rape paint the countryside yellow. Near the front gate, a sign over the road warns, “Beware of counterfeits.” But it was posted by a nearby noodle machine factory that appears to be worried about competition.
The Taixing Glycerine Factory bought its diethylene glycol from the same manufacturer as Mr. Wang, the former tailor, the government investigator said. From this spot in China’s chemical country, the 46 barrels of toxic syrup began their journey, passing from company to company, port to port and country to country, apparently without anyone testing their contents.
Traders should be thoroughly familiar with their suppliers, United States health officials say. “One simply does not assume that what is labeled is indeed what it is,” said Dr. Murray Lumpkin, deputy commissioner for international and special programs for the Food and Drug Administration.
In the Panama case, names of suppliers were removed from shipping documents as they passed from one entity to the next, according to records and investigators. That is a practice some traders use to prevent customers from bypassing them on future purchases, but it also hides the provenance of the product.
The first distributor was the Beijing trading company, CNSC Fortune Way, a unit of a state-owned business that began by supplying goods and services to Chinese personnel and business officials overseas.
As China’s market reach expanded, Fortune Way focused its business on pharmaceutical ingredients, and in 2003, it brokered the sale of the suspect syrup made by the Taixing Glycerine Factory. The manufacturer’s certificate of analysis showed the batch to be 99.5 percent pure.
Whether the Taixing Glycerine Factory actually performed the test has not been publicly disclosed.
Original certificates of analysis should be passed on to each new buyer, said Kevin J. McGlue, a board member of the International Pharmaceutical Excipients Council. In this case, that was not done.