Chapter 2576 - Investigation (Part 3)
Cui Hantang had run out of ideas for the moment. Seeing that the two men's belligerence had finally subsided, Zhang Xiao hid his amusement. "This can be done," he said, "but not spoken of openly. Did you two establish this study society just to provide staff aides for everyone? You need to at least offer them some prospects for advancement."
"My ambitions run deeper than that..." Du Yibin began.
"Ideals are ideals. Reality is something else entirely. Sending them out as staff aides isn't a bad approach, actually. Most Elders taking up local posts arrive completely in the dark—having a few locals who understand the situation and possess reliable attitudes as advisors would be genuinely useful. As long as you don't make too much of a fuss, the Senate won't come asking questions. At minimum, it gives these people practical governance experience. When they take the civil service exam, they won't be shooting blind—better than sitting in the Study Society cramming past papers and practice tests."
With smooth talk, Zhang Xiao finally sent Cui and Du on their way. As he watched them go, he thought to himself that this Zhang Jiayu really was a hot commodity. Today's conversation had been so confrontational—it felt like they were fighting over a romantic interest.
Zheng Mingjiang didn't depart for Huizhou as scheduled. The day before she was to leave, Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital sent someone over, requesting her presence for a "consultation."
"Consultation?" The word startled her. As Director of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Lingao General Hospital, a consultation request meant a pregnant woman facing major risk nine times out of ten.
"I'll come right away."
She rushed to Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital, and sure enough, the nurse who greeted her led her toward the obstetrics and gynecology department.
"Where's the patient?" Zheng Mingjiang asked hurriedly, already calling for surgical gowns and preparing to disinfect.
"It's not about a patient," the nurse said. "Dr. Fu is waiting for you."
"Dr. Fu? A consultation?" Now she was thoroughly confused. They had urgently summoned her, but instead of going to the ward, they wanted a meeting first? Who was this important patient?
In the obstetrics and gynecology office, she found not only Fu Qiliang but Lin Motian as well. Both wore somber expressions and said nothing.
"Where's the patient?" she asked.
"I'll take you," Lin Motian said.
The two led the thoroughly puzzled Zheng Mingjiang to the department's nursery and opened a ward door.
Inside, six or seven small beds held infants sleeping soundly. Nurses kept watch over them—everything appeared peaceful and serene.
"What's wrong?" Zheng Mingjiang felt a vague sense that something was amiss.
"See for yourself," Fu Qiliang said quietly. "This is the first time I've seen this since D-Day."
A nurse carefully lifted the thin blanket from an infant and undid the diaper. Zheng Mingjiang looked—and the words escaped her before she could stop them: "Female pseudohermaphroditism?"
"Yes." Fu Qiliang nodded. "Look at the other children."
The nurse undid the blankets one by one. Zheng Mingjiang examined each child. They were all the same, and judging by their ages, the oldest differed from the youngest by two months at most.
"What's going on here?" She was stunned. The incidence rate of pseudohermaphroditism was extremely low—normally between one in one hundred thousand and one in three hundred thousand. In all her years practicing in the old timeline, aside from a single case during her residency training, she hadn't seen another in over a decade. Yet here, six or seven cases had appeared at once.
Clearly this couldn't have occurred naturally—some artificial drug must have caused it. The mothers must have ingested large quantities of male hormones to produce such effects. Zheng Mingjiang suddenly remembered the "fetus-changing pills" she'd seen in Foshan. Could that be the source?
But thinking it through, while certain traditional Chinese medicines did contain relatively high levels of male hormones, natural medicines without extraction and purification couldn't achieve such effects. This had nothing to do with traditional Chinese medicine.
Fu Qiliang handed her a document. "Take a look. I find this matter very strange. It could well be connected to the antibiotic case."
Thanks to Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital's tireless promotion, some pregnant women from wealthier families in Guangzhou had begun choosing to give birth in hospitals. Recently, however, the hospital had seen two or three consecutive cases of newborns with ambiguous external genitalia, and the families blamed the hospital. Fu Qiliang grew suspicious after reviewing the cases.
"You know pseudohermaphroditism has an extremely low incidence rate," he explained. "An obstetrician might deliver babies their whole career without encountering a single case. And they're all female pseudohermaphroditism—that's very strange."
Such a concentrated cluster of cases, all female, appearing in such a short period naturally struck Fu Qiliang as anomalous. He immediately informed Lin Motian.
"So we contacted the Joint Midwifery Clinic and had the midwives report whether there were similar cases in home births..."
The Joint Midwifery Clinic was a medical improvement project the health sector had launched in Guangzhou and elsewhere. To compensate for the shortage of hospital beds and reduce childbirth risks, midwife training was conducted in various locations. Whether former traditional midwives or women newly entering the profession, all could participate in free training. After passing evaluation and internship, they received practicing certificates, operated under the Joint Midwifery Clinic, and conducted home deliveries. All related cases were recorded and archived.
"Upon investigation, we discovered multiple similar cases of female pseudohermaphroditism involving about ten infants. Additionally, there were over ten cases of abnormal genital development in male infants."
"Testosterone drug abuse?" Zheng Mingjiang blurted out.
"Correct." Fu Qiliang nodded.
"What about these children?" she said urgently. "We need to admit them immediately. Remediation now can still salvage something!"
"Except for a few who died from illness, we've admitted them all over the past few days," Fu Qiliang said. "Dr. Lin and I felt we should ask you for a consultation—do a comprehensive evaluation, then formulate a treatment plan."
"That's no problem." Zheng Mingjiang nodded. "I can postpone the Huizhou trip or send someone else. But there's a bigger issue here."
"Yes, Dr. Lin thinks so too. Only our pharmaceutical factory can produce testosterone drugs. These children's mothers must have used testosterone during pregnancy."
"So more drugs have leaked out."
"Correct. Testosterone and dihydrotestosterone affect fetal external genital development mainly during weeks eight through fifteen of pregnancy, while normal pregnancies last about forty weeks. That means if we only start investigating after observing newborn abnormalities, this batch of drugs must have arrived in Guangzhou at least half a year ago."
"When did this go into production?"
"Strictly speaking, it was never officially in production," Zheng Mingjiang said. "To this day it's still small-batch trial production. There's only small-scale Phase I clinical trials at Lingao General Hospital's outpatient clinic. Honestly, I never expected anyone would connect it with fetus-changing."
Lin, Fu, and the others were medical personnel whose perception of pharmaceutical development was essentially a black box. Doctors only knew what drugs they currently needed and what drugs the pharmaceutical sector could produce—nothing more. Learning that the pharmaceutical factory produced testosterone surprised them, since this drug had no apparent use in this timeline.
Zheng Mingjiang had been in Lingao for a long time. She also handled some pharmacy work at Bairen General Hospital, frequently dealing with technical personnel from Danzhou Pharmaceuticals, so she knew this compound's origins.
"There's not only testosterone—conjugated estrogen went into production at the same time," she said.
"But these two things have no use for us now." Lin Motian seemed puzzled.
Conjugated estrogen's main indications were relieving vasomotor symptoms, mucosal atrophy, osteoporosis, and other conditions appearing during female menopause. Testosterone went without saying—no Elder had reported strong demand in that regard. If there was any demand, it would at most be for certain external sales markets.
"You're right." Zheng Mingjiang nodded. Demand for testosterone and conjugated estrogen indeed wasn't very large. The factory's R&D was mainly intended as an introduction to steroid hormone synthesis research. Zheng Mingjiang didn't understand much about the technical details—she only knew what Hao Long, who headed R&D, had told her: developing and producing these two sex hormones was a stepping stone for producing hormone drugs down the line.
"So that's how it is. Being able to produce various hormones would indeed be a great thing," Fu Qiliang said. "But this drug is still in Phase I clinical trials with such limited application scenarios—how did it leak out?"
"If we're talking about the source, there are only two possibilities. One is the pharmaceutical factory; the other is Bairen General Hospital's pharmacy." Zheng Mingjiang recalled that she had been very careful about drug control. At the time, she hadn't been thinking about drugs leaking out—rather, she had worried the half-trained pharmacists in the pharmacy would get medicines mixed up.
Could someone be manipulating things in the pharmacy? Her heart suddenly sank.
After a moment's thought, she rose abruptly. "No good—I need to return to Lingao immediately. If these drugs keep leaking out, they'll cause endless harm!"
Lin Motian hurried to stop her. "Don't rush! This could well be the work of a gang. Since it's come to light now, we still need to investigate thoroughly. There's no need to rush off this instant. Tomorrow, let's hold a meeting first, compile this into a report, and submit it to Dr. Shi. Since you're now leading the joint investigation team, why not investigate this together?"
Lin and Fu's position was to prioritize investigating the antibiotic leakage case. Since testosterone was a trial drug with inherently small production volume, the leaked quantity would necessarily be very limited, without much impact on the overall health sector. It could be investigated later.
Zheng Mingjiang considered their reasoning and nodded. "Then I'll go to Huizhou as planned. However, during my trip to Foshan, I bought quite a few 'miracle drugs.' Some of them also contained purified crystalline substances—possibly leaked drugs as well. There are no testing facilities in Guangzhou..."
"We'll arrange that," Lin Motian said. "We'll send them to the Health Ministry's pharmaceutical laboratory for testing as soon as possible."
"What about treating these children?" Fu Qiliang asked. "We've now identified over twenty affected male and female children. Further investigation will probably find more. Drug treatment requires controlled substances—we don't have them here."
(End of Chapter)