Two companies called Merck deny buying Chinese 'superdrug'

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-09-19

Chinese medicinal herbs. (File photo/Xinhua)

Two pharmaceutical companies on Sept. 17 denied a report saying they had splurged 50 billion yuan (US$8.1 billion) on the purchase of a traditional Chinese medical formula that is touted as a cure for liver cancer, the Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald reports.

The paper said a Hong Kong merchant who claimed he represented "Germany-based US pharmaceutical giant Merck" tried to buy a patent for a prescription for a liver cancer treatment from the Anhui-based Jinfang Huaixia Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Center.

The report was first published by the website of the People's Daily on Sept. 9 before it made the rounds of several media outlets.

The report has created a headache for international pharmaceutical companies which use the name Merck.

"Although our headquarters are indeed in Darmstadt, Germany, we are not an American enterprise," a spokesperson for Merck Serono said, adding that the company is not aware of the merchant in question and has never bought such a prescription.

The US pharmaceutical company Merck, known as Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) outside the United States and Canada, stated, "The headquarters of our company is in New Jersey in the United States, not in Germany."

Health authorities in Anhui meanwhile said they have no registration information on Jinfang Huaixia Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Center, according to the report.

US company MSD ranked 207th on the list of the world's top 500 companies in 2012, with net profits of 39.51 billion yuan (US$6.42 billion).

German firm Merck Serono meanwhile registered losses of €151 million (US$201.53 million) last year. The two companies' net profits are both lower than the 50 billion yuan (US$8.13 billion) offered for the prescription.

The formula, according to the report, is one of a series of "super" traditional Chinese prescriptions developed by the research center. Another prescription obtained an exclusive patent in 2001 and "has been sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" ahead of its application for the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Zhang Ping, an alleged director of the center, was quoted as saying that Zhang Tianzheng was the man who had developed the prescriptions. The cancer cure was claimed to have an "instant" effect on liver cancer patients and could also be used to treat multi-organ failure.

Many internet users have compared Zhang Tianzheng to Wang Lin, a man whose dubious claims to be a qigong master with healing powers have made him a wealthy and controversial figure.

Some also called for legal liability for the media outlets that spread the news, according to a report by Global Times, a tabloid published under the auspices of People's Daily.