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Author Topic:   China execution -- FDA chief
naiad
unregistered
posted July 10, 2007 02:25 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
China executes ex-head of food and drug agency

Zheng sentenced to death in May for taking bribes to OK substandard drugs

China executes ex-drug chief

Updated: 2 hours, 17 minutes ago
BEIJING - China on Tuesday executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog who had become a symbol of the country’s wide-ranging problems on product safety.

Zheng Xiaoyu’s execution was confirmed by State Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Yan Jianyang at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.

Such cases “have brought shame to our administration and revealed serious problems. We need to seriously reflect on what lessons we can draw from such cases,” Yan said about Zheng and a separate case involving Cao Wenzhuang, the administration’s former pharmaceutical registration department director.

Zheng was sentenced to death in May for taking bribes to approve an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths and other substandard medicines. Cao was given a death sentence last month with a two-year reprieve for accepting bribes and dereliction of duty.

Such suspended death sentences usually are commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have reformed.

Tighter safety procedures
Zheng’s death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and likely indicates the leadership’s determination to confront the country’s dire product safety record.

Yan said the food and drug administration was working to tighten its safety procedures and create a more transparent operating environment. But the administration acknowledged that its supervision of food and drug safety is unsatisfactory and that it has been slow to tackle the problem, but vowed to improve.

“As a developing country, China’s current food and drug safety situation is not very satisfactory because supervision of food and drug safety started late. Its foundation is weak so the supervision of food and drug safety is not easy,” it said in a statement at the start of the news conference.

China has been under pressure domestically and internationally to improve its quality controls after a series of health scares attributed to substandard Chinese products, including exported tainted food and fake drugs.

Chinese officials already have said the country faces social unrest and a further tarnished image abroad unless it improves the quality and safety of its food and medicine.

The industry regulator, the State Food and Drug Administration, has announced a series of measures to tighten safety controls and closed factories where illegal chemicals or other problems were found.

Fears abroad over Chinese-made products were sparked last year by the deaths of dozens of people in Panama who took medicine contaminated with diethylene glycol imported from China. It was passed off as harmless glycerin.

Tainted wheat gluten
In North America earlier this year, pet food containing Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine was blamed for the deaths of dogs and cats.

Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with lead paint.

Chinese-made toothpaste also has been banned in a handful of countries due to its content of diethylene glycol. However, there have been no reports of health problems stemming from the product. China has no guideline banning the chemical in toothpaste, and the government says it is harmless in small amounts.

The list of food scares within China over the past year includes drug-tainted fish, banned Sudan dye used to color egg yolks red, and pork tainted with clenbuterol, a banned feed additive.

China also has stepped up its inspections of imported products and said some U.S. products are not safe.

In the latest case, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday that a shipment of sugar-free drink mix from the United States had been rejected for having too much red dye.

Last week, China’s food safety watchdog said almost 20 percent of products made for consumption within China were found to be substandard in the first half of 2007. Canned and preserved fruit and dried fish were the most problematic, primarily because of excessive bacteria and additives, the agency said.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19686498/?GT1=10150

while i am asounded that a person would be executed for taking bribes, his negligence did cause numerous deaths. wondering, how many U.S. politicians would think twice about endangering people's lives with their hidden agendas if the punishment were death?

(n.b. ~ i believe capital punishment for any reason is barbaric and counter-productive. only a few countries still endorse it, among them -- China, Muslim countries and the U.S., hmmmm....good company America is in, isn't it?)

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naiad
unregistered
posted July 11, 2007 02:22 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
interesting take on capital punishment ~
(some of the biggest pro-death penalty proponents are "christians", a non-sequitur i cannot understand.)

THE DEATH PENALTY
AS REJECTION OF GOD'S JUSTICE

by Peter Gathje

In executing another human being, we are not doing justice; rather we are destroying justice. People give to the word "justice" many different meanings. I want to draw your attention to biblical justice. As a Christian, I believe the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible speaks truly of God and of our relationship with God, and of how we are to live with each other in accord with God's will.

So when I want to know the meaning of justice, I turn to the Bible; I turn to God's Word. One of the first things I discover in the Bible is that God is just. Being just, God's actions express justice.

I also discover that human beings are created in the image of God, and thus we, too, are created to be just-we are created in such a way that we are called, within our human limits, to imitate the justice of God. I also discover that human beings are not God, and so there are some things - some aspects of human life - that are to be left to God and thus some aspects of justice that are beyond human doing.

God's justice is evident in that we are created in such a way that if we separate ourselves from God, who is our Creator, our Source of life, then we die. St. Paul puts it simply and clearly: "The wages of sin is death." This truth, that separation from God results in death, is stated in many ways throughout the Old Testament. The long list of sins punishable by death tells us, again and again, that if we turn away from God, we die. Does God want us to die?

Does God endorse this death penalty? Again and again, God acts to overturn our self-imposed death sentence. God responds to the first sin of humans in the Garden of Eden with a promise of redemption. God responds to Cain's murder of his brother Abel by protecting Cain from vengeance. God responds to Moses' murder of the Egyptian by making Moses the leader of the Israelites. God responds to David's murder of Uriah by sending the prophet Nathan to bring David to repentance. God responds to the sins of the Israelites by again and again sending prophets to bring them to repentance.

If God were for the death penalty, God would have long ago put the entire human race to death. In the book of Ezekiel we hear God speak, and God says, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn back from their ways and live." (Ezekiel 33:11) This is the whole thrust of Biblical justice - God's work to bring us back from our self-imposed death sentence.

The Bible makes it clear that the fullest expression and embodiment of God's justice is Jesus Christ. Jesus' life is in complete obedience to God's will - which means Jesus' life is God's justice.

Jesus tells us that the purpose of His life is to bring us life - life to the full (John 10:10). Jesus fulfills the laws given in the Old testament in that he reveals God's intent in those laws through his words and his life. Jesus reveals the meaning of the Old Testament law of an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" as not an endorsement of vengeance but rather a rejection of vengeance.

And thus Jesus brings us to the divinely logical end point of the rejection of vengeance - namely, love of enemies. We are no longer simply to love those who love us; this does not rise to the standard of God's justice. Now Jesus tells us we are to even love our enemies, as God does. We are to forgive, as God does. We are to have mercy, as God does. We are to be generous, as God is. We are to always seek the redemption of the sinner, as God does.

But Jesus does not simply teach this divine justice; Jesus gives his very life in obedience to God's justice. God does not reject us in our sins. God does not leave us as sinners - as enemies of God - under the power of death. No! God sends God's only Son to overcome the power of sin and death through the cross and resurrection. Sin imposes upon the human Jesus the sentence of death shared by all humanity, but God raises Jesus from the dead and defeats this power of sin and death.

In doing this, God makes available to all human beings the victory of Jesus over death. This is God's justice in action. God's justice finds all human beings redeemable; God's justice acts to save all human beings from death.

Jesus Christ was crucified for the justice of His day. If God is for that kind of justice, then God should have left Jesus Christ in the grave. But God is not for that justice which masquerades as vengeance. God raises Jesus Christ on Easter, defeating the power of sin and death.

The death penalty violates this justice of God, because it asserts that some human beings are not redeemable; that some human beings should not be saved from death. The death penalty not only seeks to cut a human being off from physical life; it seeks to impose a spiritual death on the person executed by denying the person the time to change, to convert.

The death penalty would impose a human timetable upon God, by saying if God really wants to save this person, God could. Indeed, God could, but who are we to tell God when and where this is to take place? The death penalty makes the state into God, deciding who is redeemable and who is not. The death penalty violates God's justice in deciding that some people should not be allowed the chance at salvation, at conversion, at change. The death penalty even goes so far as to say, "We want this person to rot in hell" - as if we are to determine who is to be saved and who is not.

The death penalty, then, is not only not God's justice, it is idolatry. And as idolatry, it is the worst form of injustice-it does not give to God what is due to God as God - namely, power over life and death. It is idolatry in that it makes the state into God. It is idolatry in its preaching of a false god - a god of death rather than the God of life. God is a God of life, not a God of death. My God, what is so wrong with us that we so pervert God's Word to make God into a God of death?

http://www.kcadp.org/Resources/Death_Penalt_as_God's_Justice.htm

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lalalinda
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Posts: 1120
From: nevada
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 11, 2007 08:52 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for lalalinda     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
you come up with great pieces naiad

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naiad
unregistered
posted July 11, 2007 09:16 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
thanks...i'd love to take responsibility for their origin....

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