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China bans brain surgery to cure drug addicts
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-19 15:06
China's health ministry has banned controversial brain operations to cure
drug addicts due to concerns over harmful side-effects and a lack of scientific
studies on the practice, Xinhua news agency said.
A man walks in front of a light box with
Chinese writing that reads 'Severe Damage of Drug' at an anti-drugs
exhibition in Shanghai in 2003. [AFP] |
"The ministry will not resume the surgery until a comprehensive and
scientific evaluation is given to the safety and effectiveness of the practice
and a technical standard is established," health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an
told Xinhua news agency.
Curing drug addiction through brain surgery was suspended in China last
November, with evaluation and discussion over the potential side effects among
medical experts leading to Monday's ban, the report said.
More than 500 operations have been conducted across the country since a
hospital in southern Guangdong province received authorisation to perform the
surgery in 2000.
The operations, pioneered by Russian scientists in 1999, remove a part of the
brain associated with drug cravings.
"Practicing brain surgery on patients is unethical and irresponsible," Xinhua
quoted an unnamed health ministry official as saying.
"Its safety, effectiveness and suitability needs long-term monitoring and has
to pass stringent scientific tests," the report said.
Doctors say the operations could cause many side effects including the loss
of sex drive, the Beijing News reported in November when the surgeries were
suspended.
"We need more time -- five to 10 years -- to find the real overall effect of
the surgery," Li Yongjie, director of the functional neurosurgery department of
Xuanwu hospital in Beijing, was quoted as saying.
Li said the success rate of such operations in some countries outside China
was only about 60 percent.
The practice was banned in Russia in 2002 after a patient claimed he had
suffered headaches as a result of the operation, which also failed to cure him
of his addiction.
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