Deadly Drug Linked with Chinese Pigs May contain Counterfeit Ingredient
-- Contaminant found in China-linked blood thinner/IHT

International Herald Tribune

Contaminant found in China-linked blood thinner

By Gardiner Harris and Walt Bogdanich
Thursday, March 6, 2008

WASHINGTON: U.S. government drug regulators have discovered that a
critical blood thinner that has been linked to at least 19 deaths and
whose raw components are produced in China contained a possibly
counterfeit ingredient that mimicked the real drug.

Routine tests failed to distinguish the contaminant from the drug,
heparin. Only sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging tests uncovered
that as much as 20 percent of the product's active ingredient was a
heparin mimic blended in with the real thing.

"At this point, we do not know whether the introduction was accidental
or whether it was deliberate," said Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock
of the Food and Drug Administration.