An illegal trade in human placenta is “flourishing” in eastern China, hundreds of thousands are sold each year despite the national ban on the practice in 2005 in Hong Kong Apple Daily newspaper reported Tuesday.
“Underground merchants operating near the provincial boundaries of Anhui, Jiangsu and Henan have been selling fresh placentas that they purchase from hospitals, medical waste and funeral factories across the country,” according to the newspaper, which cited a recent report in the newspaper, a website state-controlled news outlet.
A trader the newspaper interviewed said that his group handled 130,000 placentas in 2020 obtained from various medical clinics and medical waste facilities across eastern China. The merchant’s group paid 80 yuan ($ 12.30) for each placenta and sold them to suppliers of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) at a profit.
Placenta sales have also recently been detected on e-commerce platforms verified in China, such as Alibaba’s Taobao. Traders put placentas on the platform for sale “in the range of 450 yuan ($ 69) to 580 yuan ($ 89). Vendors charge more for placentas that are verified with test reports, ”according to the report.
TCM practitioners consider the human placenta “a legitimate treatment for those with weak immune systems and to help treat various diseases, such as tuberculosis and hypoemia, and for reproductive health,” according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) MTC traders often dry placentas, spray them into powder and then pack the powder in gelatin capsules or dry mixes for consumption as soup or with other foods. Some dried placentas are simply sold whole.
Most Western doctors dismiss the consumption of the human placenta as a dangerous practice because the organ – created temporarily within the body of a pregnant mother to facilitate the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to the fetus – may be contaminated with viruses and diseases transmitted by the mother , such as HIV / AIDS, hepatitis B and syphilis.
The human placenta is known as “ziheche” in TCM, which in itself is a generic term for several natural health remedies, such as herbal teas, acupuncture and meditation. TCM is an ancient Chinese holistic medicine practice that the Chinese government recently co-opted to promote a profitable pseudoscience-based medical industry that generates hundreds of billions of dollars for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Although the Chinese Ministry of Health banned the trade in human placentas in 2005 because of the health risks associated with the practice, “[t]The pharmaceutical placenta trade falls into a gray area. … There is no law that prohibits the sale of Ziheche drugs and no stipulation on the source of the material ”, the SCMP noted Tuesday.