China’s latest medical scandal involves a woman who spent a fortune on cosmetic breast augmentation, only to discover her implants contained “filler” tissue from camels, bats, and chimpanzees.
Chinese state media reported the patient underwent a procedure in 2022 at a clinic called “Chumeiren” that has since been shut down. The clinic advertised an exclusive procedure using “CRT autologous collagen regeneration technology.”
China’s state-run Global Times explained this procedure was touted as involving “no surgery or synthetic implants, instead utilizing the consumer’s own blood tissue for cultivation, promising a 20-minute procedure resulting in larger breasts.”
The patient, a resident of Beijing referred to as “Lanlan” by the Global Times, was told she would receive a referral discount that brought the fee for her procedure down to a still-hefty 546,800 yuan, which works out to a little over $75,500.
At first, Lanlan was pleased with the outcome, as the procedure lasted just 20 minutes and left no visible scarring. She later began noticing “asymmetry” and “persistent discomfort” in her breasts, leading her to schedule a medical examination. An ultrasound discovered “foreign bodies” within her breasts, which she had surgically removed, at an additional cost of 200,000 yuan (about $27,600).
The Global Times described the terrible aftermath of that surgical procedure, during which Lanlan’s surgeon removed about 200 milliliters of a “yellow, oily substance” from her breasts and replaced it with prosthetic implants:
Despite extensive cleansing, traces of the fillers remained, posing potential health risks.
Analysis of the filler samples revealed proteins from various animal sources, including camels, bats, and chimpanzees. Lanlan, now seven months pregnant, faces anxiety over breastfeeding due to the complications from her breast augmentation surgery.
In addition, Lanlan’s mother also underwent the same procedure with the same institution, spending over 600,000 yuan, and she experienced breast pain and deformities as well.
Lanlan sued the Chumeiren clinic and was awarded $103,400 in compensation, but she will have trouble recovering that amount, because the clinic is gone and the owner has disappeared. The surgeon who performed her breast augmentation surgery was discovered to be a general surgeon from a Beijing hospital who had no cosmetic surgery credentials.
The Global Times noted the case was a major public relations blow to China’s fast-growing cosmetic surgery industry, which now boasts a little under 20,000 duly accredited clinics – plus about four times that many “black institutions” with dodgy regulatory compliance. Only a quarter of cosmetic surgeons in China are believed to be fully compliant with regulations.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation announced a crackdown last week that would include tighter regulation of advertisements by the “medical aesthetics industry,” including a ban on “unauthorized ads promoting unrealistic beauty standards” and unscrupulous social media influences who promote illegal procedures.
China is notorious for medical scandals, which have occasionally prompted remarkably large displays of public outrage, even before the entire world learned to its sorrow that best practices may not have been followed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.