City Evening News
July 28, 2009

Today's City Evening News features a front page story about a patient's sudden death midway through his treatment for what started as an eye problem.

In May this year, Changchun resident Yu Jinguo (55) found his right eye had gone blind. In a local hospital, he was diagnosed with cerebral infarction, a type of stroke. However, over 20 days of treatment failed to bring any improvement to Yu's condition.

On July 21, when Yu was shopping in a convenience store near his home, the shopkeeper told him that a special therapy cured her of cerebral thrombosis sequela. Another woman at the store named Yin also testified to the effectiveness of the therapy claiming it also worked magic on a family member of hers with similar afflictions.

On the same day, Ms Yin took Yu to a local hospital where they met Doctor Hou. Hou, whose own father purportedly recovered his sight after receiving the treatment, told Yu that there was only one vacancy left in the treatment camp and he shouldn't let go of the opportunity.

After a payment of 580 yuan, Yu, accompanied by his wife, went to the camp set up in the mountains on 22th. Over one hundred other patients were already there.

The treatment requires patients to drink large quantity of vegetable juice, besides of intake of protein powder and various unidentified pills. According to Hou, one should "drink as much as possible juice... the more the better." As a result, "everyone drank vegetable juice like crazy." Yu himself drunk "over 5 kilograms of vegetable juice" during his first day at the camp.

The second day Yu found that his leg had become numb, but Dr. Hou explained it as a good sign indicating the treatment was taking effect. Yu also had diarrhea and suffered from hemorrhoid bleeding. On 24th, the last day of the camp, Yu fell to the ground unconscious and was pronounced dead the same day.

On 25th, Dr. Hou paid 10,000 yuan to Yu's family in compensation and promised another 30,000 yuan. However, yesterday when the newspaper reporter contacted Dr. Hou, she insisted that she had no responsibility in Yu's death, saying that she would like to go to court and let the law to decide. Speaking of the compensation, Hou said "there were a whole bunch of people demanding money, I was scared."