MNN - Mother Nature Network

In news reports that sound more horrifying than true, South Korea is staging its own war against drugs, combating a sickening influx of pills from China that promise to cure ailments of every variety.

 

Instead of snake oil, these often unknowing smugglers are selling a powdered tonic rendered from human fetuses.

 

The story was first reported in a documentary developed by South Korean television station SBS last August. According to their research, these "dietary supplements" are made by pharmaceutical companies in northeastern China and utilize the corpses of babies that are miscarried, stillborn, and the millions that are aborted each year to keep in line with the country's population regulations. The bodies are also allegedly transported to refrigerated holding areas, many in private homes, and later chopped up, dried in an industrial microwave, and ground into the powder that serves as a folk remedy for everything from circulation problems to sexual stamina.

 

The broadcast crew from SBS claims to have conducted DNA tests on the capsules that proved the powder was 99.7 percent human, with skin and nail remnants detected in the mix as well.

 

China has long revered the human placenta for its supposed medicinal uses, and still engages in placentophagy (the consumption of the placenta after childbirth). Cultural beliefs support the thought that the placenta contains life-supporting nutrition that will restore a woman's health after child birth and keep her from developing post-partum depression. People throughout the world also see the placenta as a window back in time, feeling it will restore youth and preserve beauty. In fact, you might even be smearing some stranger’s placenta on your face when you use your moisturizing cream.

 

But this definitely surpasses the gross factor of placentophagy and crosses into the plot boundaries of some creepy B-movie that can have nothing but a tragic end.

 

Since no one is certain how the pills are produced, they could pose a serious health, if not moral, risk. Not knowing the condition of the corpses, who handled them, what diseases the mother might have passed on, if anything was sanitized or if any infection was present, makes the pills a horrendous health risk for consumers. Korean authorities have surmised that many of the pills contain super bacteria and have the potential to pass along Hepatitis and HIV.

 

Custom officials in South Korea have seized over 17,000 of these human pills since the documentary aired. Most of the tourists bringing them into the country are unaware of their contents, just that they thought the supplements would give them better health and increased sexual stamina.

 

If this is an ancient Chinese secret, it's one I never wanted to hear.