"A spokesman said the scale of the problem proved it was 'clearly not an isolated accident, [but] a large-scale intentional activity to deceive consumers for simple, basic, short-term profits.'"
This is a nation of almost 1.4 billion people.
There are more unarmed civilians (including children) murdered by US police every year than all deaths from the Chinese milk scandal combined.
Would that make it reasonable to state that "All US citizens have proved they have no conscience"?
In any case, the Chinese milk scandal pales in comparison to what Nestle did: https://www.businessinsider.com/nestles-infant-formula-scand...
Do you no longer buy Nestle?
From the parent comment: "Chinese vendors and mfgs"
- Nestle made a baby formula
- They marketed it heavily to poor people in the third world.
- Poor people in the third world proceed to dilute the formula with more than the recommended amount of water to save money (and the article does not say that this was at Nestle's prompting), and as a result didn't feed their babies enough.
Maybe less than ideal and somewhat scummy? Sure, most advertising is like that really. Worse than literally selling poisonous baby formula? I don't see it.
But perhaps I misunderstand the accusation.
We are comparing a non defective product that couldn’t be used effectively by a certain populations to outright fraud.
https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/5379/2015-09-18/gm-pay...
As an analogy, take sugary snacks. Say a snack has lots of sugar but the company claims it is sugar free anyways. In another case, a snack is truthful about its sugar content but the consumer lacks the education (or willpower) to care. Aren’t these completely different problems?
Sugar has probably killed more than millions, which has definitely been driven by corporate profits and gaming the system (substituting sugar for fat). But again, Coke Cola and Mars (and yes, Nestle) haven't been consider a scandal yet.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sugar-harvard-scandal-nutriti...
And they both clearly involve outright deception. The difference is probably just not as many babies dying. At least not yet, cokes aren't advertised as being healthier than breastfeeding for babies.
Mothers bought it and used it so their own breast milk dried up. Then when they couldn't afford enough of it as the baby grew and needed more, they were forced to ration the formula.
Millions died.
National/racial smears are unacceptable here. If you use HN for nationalistic flamewar again we will ban you.
> poisoning Americans is part of Chinese culture .
WTF is wrong with you? Why are there humans on HN like you?
BTW the Chinese who poisoned their own countrymen in pursuit of profit were put to death, while the Americans who do the same to this day in Flint, Michigan and other places are still alive and they're still poisoning Americans. Is it American culture to poison your countrymen?
The Chinese melamine scandal is over too.
That's a pretty repulsive sentiment, and it's rich too coming from an American like yourself. Not surprising that it garners plenty of upvotes on a cesspool like "Hacker" News.
Since it's both flagged (from user flags) and dead (from user downvotes), I don't think that comment is warranted.
To call out an entire people as cruel and heartless is just so wrong!
In support of my view, I quoted the World Health Organization stating that these people knew what they were doing, and it was done intentionally on a large scale.
In your view, is the World Health Organization fond of writing "racist white supremcist[sic] drivel"?
How is it "racist" or "white supremacist" to express horror at injury and death of Chinese babies? If I were either of those slurs, I would be celebrating this scandal, not expressing horror at it.
It's worthwhile to bring attention to that and it's good that you're doing so, but try to put it in a format that uses examples and sound reasoning. That way people might be more inclined to listen to it, as opposed to a fairly emotional argument that is also vaguely hostile to boot.
> consider the details of the Chinese infant formula scandal of 2008. Unscrupulous businessmen had discovered they could save money by greatly diluting their milk products, then adding a plastic chemical compound called melamine to raise the apparent protein content back to normal levels. Nearly 300,000 babies throughout China had suffered urinary problems, with many hundreds requiring lengthy hospitalization for kidney stones. Six died. A wave of popular outrage swept past the controlled media roadblocks and initial government excuses, and soon put enormous pressure on Chinese officials to take forceful action against the wrongdoers.
> China’s leaders may not be democratically elected, but they pay close attention to strong popular sentiment. Once pressed, they quickly launched a national police investigation which led to a series of arrests and uncovered evidence that this widespread system of food adulteration had been protected by bribe-taking government officials. Long prison sentences were freely handed out and a couple of the guiltiest culprits were eventually tried and executed for their role, measures that gradually assuaged popular anger. Indeed, the former head of the Chinese FDA had been executed for corruption in late 2007 under similar circumstances.
> In September 2004, Merck, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies, suddenly announced that it was voluntarily recalling Vioxx, its popular anti-pain medication widely used to treat arthritis-related ailments. This abrupt recall came just days after Merck discovered that a top medical journal was about to publish a massive study by an FDA investigator indicating that the drug in question greatly increased the risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes and had probably been responsible for at least 55,000 American deaths during the five years it had been on the market.
> Within weeks of the recall, journalists discovered that Merck had found strong evidence of the potentially fatal side-effects of this drug even before its initial 1999 introduction, but had ignored these worrisome indicators and avoided additional testing, while suppressing the concerns of its own scientists. Boosted by a television advertising budget averaging a hundred million dollars per year, Vioxx soon became one of Merck’s most lucrative products, generating over $2 billion in yearly revenue. Merck had also secretly ghostwritten dozens of the published research studies emphasizing the beneficial aspects of the drug and encouraging doctors to widely prescribe it, thus transforming science into marketing support. Twenty-five million Americans were eventually prescribed Vioxx as an aspirin-substitute thought to produce fewer complications.
> Although the Vioxx scandal certainly did generate several days of newspaper headlines and intermittently returned to the front pages as the resulting lawsuits gradually moved through our judicial system, the coverage still seemed scanty relative to the number of estimated fatalities, which matched America’s total losses in the Vietnam War. In fact, the media coverage often seemed considerably less than that later accorded to the Chinese infant food scandal, which had caused just a handful of deaths on the other side of the world.
Killing an old person 7 years before they would otherwise die is not as bad as killing an infant 78 years before it would otherwise die. But is it really less than 0.1% as bad?
It’s also interesting how saying Chinese people are so different is widely accepted on HN. Can you imagine if the same comment was made about Jewish people?
I do hear others say the Chinese are the Jews of the East.
And “having dealt with Jewish vendors and mfgs for years that is a scary scenario. The whole culture of trust / fairness / honesty is very different from the west.”
Sure, if the Jews were most of the population of the US and Europe instead of being about 2%.
The Hakka are the Jews of the East. (Or, in India, the Parsis are.)
I've met contractors who did extensive work for businessmen in the US, who then turned around and told the contractor, "You want to be paid? Sue me!"
The whole culture of trust / fairness / honesty is very different from the west.
Is it really that different? There are some people who are good and some people who end up being opportunistic in evil ways. The more I learn about differences across cultures, the more I conclude that the differences are always ones of degree, and the differences are made more visible due to the cultural contrasts. That said, is there more rule of law and enforcement around IP issues in the west than in China? I suspect that's also true.
Dealt with our products being knocked off for years, wouldn’t want to buy cancer meds ever!
There are also people in the west who aren't above faking treatments for cancer.
Some are incredibly kind and fair.
Some are incredibly immoral, who can be viewed as demon incarnations. See example like this: https://www.zhihu.com/question/53610601 (manufacture human monster slave to use as worker as fake beggar)
Some are incredibly immoral, who can be viewed as demon incarnations.
You can find comparable extremes in all places.
The example I cite here is well-knwon, and yet it exists still today.
Can you imagine western countries allow this to happen regularly?
Just to point out the status-quo.
So true, here you go: https://www.dw.com/en/cancer-drug-scandal-german-pharmacist-...
The free press and independent justice system makes the difference.
Those can and do make a difference. No system is perfect, however. Chinese culture has an extensive heritage of moral philosophy. Despite that, it's still been shown that it's possible to overturn the social order there with massive consequences. The west certainly isn't above that sort of chaos. France and Germany, the largest economic powers of continental Europe, have that in their history. The US isn't entirely above this kind of chaos, either.
The press in the west also follows a propaganda model.
https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...
Justice systems in the west have been known to cooperate with the authorities in miscarriages of justice, particularly in wartime or when subject to near-wartime hysteria.
When it comes down to it, there is always a struggle between good and evil in all times and places. The really tricky part of it is this: The worst evils disguise themselves as movements of good and justice. People and movements should be judged by their actions. Ask: Who is committing violence against whom? Who abets or tacitly accepts bad actions? Who is willing to call out their own side and their own tribe when they do wrong?
The left/right political spectrum ceases to have meaning when you look at it that way. The Authoritarian/Anti-authoritarian spectrum and the tribalist/universalist spectrums hold much more value.
Exactly. When you have a culture that more often accepts scams as necessary to succeed and another culture that shuns them, you will probably see disparities in the percentages of people in those cultures who are willing to scam. Ostracism is a powerful deterrent.
Extra points if you get the lab to quantify purity instead of just finding presence.
Lots of pharma APIs are manufactured in China or India.
Yeah, having dealt with Chinese vendors and mfgs for years that is a scary scenario. The whole culture of trust / fairness / honesty is very different from the west.
Dealt with our products being knocked off for years, wouldn’t want to buy cancer meds ever!