Rumor of forced anti-cancer drug test rejected

Authorities in Linqu county, Shandong Province and a professor from the Beijing Cancer Hospital (BCH) Wednesday rejected an online rumor that some 200,000 people in the county had been forced to take unknown experimental medicines.

"We have explained the project to local people to let them know what they are taking and why they are taking them. Everyone taking part in the trial has signed a letter of consent," said Pan Kaifeng, a professor with the BCH and the initiator of the project.

Yangcheng Evening News reported that a post spread online over the weekend accused the county's health bureau of "forcing local residents, including officials, to take some unknown medicines that can prevent gastric cancer."

"Participants did not sign any letter of consent and don't know what they are taking," the rumor claimed, according to the newspaper.

Pan argued that all the drugs used are formal clinical medicines approved by relevant authorities and the project's goal is to eradicate Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium found in the stomach.

"Linqu has a very high gastric cancer rate as 95 percent of residents there over 45 years of age have gastric diseases. Our previous studies showed that the eradication of Helicobacter pylori can significantly reduce the risk of gastric cancer. That's why we chose Linqu as our research target and set a sample pool of 200,000," Pan said.

According to her, Helicobacter pylori infection and the local people's preference for sour and preserved food are contributors to the high gastric cancer rate in Linqu.

Several villagers, who declined to be named, confirmed Pan's claim with the Global Times, saying that no-one was forced to join the project.

Liu Weidong, director of the Gastric Cancer Prevention and Control Institute of Linqu, also told the Yangcheng Evening News that the project was conducted on a voluntary basis.

The Global Times found the project was registered under ChiCTR-TRC-10000979 in the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform of the World Health Organization.

The project is funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the project's secondary sponsors are the International Digestive Cancer Alliance and the Technical University of Munich.

Wang Sixin, a law professor at the Communication University of China, urged people to be vigilant against online rumors, as such false information can spread quickly on the Internet given the Web's nature of high exposure and anonymous posting.

In December, the relevant authorities ordered the country's major microblog providers to adopt real-name registration as one measure to prevent rumors from spreading on the Internet.

Zhu Shanshan contributed to this story