now that's some charity.

[rmd]

man, i thought it was bad when people left dirty clothes to the morgan memorial/goodwill box.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2005/12/09/225184/China_to_return_dirty_donation.htm
CHINA will return thousands of pounds of medical equipment reportedly donated by the US Mormon church because it includes stained bedding, used surgical clothes, and expired medical equipment, a charity official said today, the Associated Press reported.

The donations came from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, said a woman reached at the publicity department of China Charity, the country's largest charitable organization.

The woman confirmed a report on the Beijing News Website that said three containers of donations sent to charitable organizations in Beijing and the northern provinces of Anhui and Hebei were found to be of "questionable quality" and would be sent back.

Customs inspectors in Beijing found medical pipes that expired in 1998, dirty, mildewed sheets and used surgical gowns in one of the shipments, the newspaper said. Similarly shoddy goods were also found in the shipments sent to Anhui and Hebei, it said.

The shipment for Anhui alone totaled 926 boxes and weighed 6,910 kilograms, the newspaper said. It did not give the size of the other two shipments.

Comments

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

A) If it's entirely true, and
B) It was done consciously and with malice, then
C) That's reprehensible.

[I'm trying to be a little more critical of my news sources, lately. I've been realizing that I'm having liberal knee-jerk reactions to a lot of what I hear, and that bothers me.]

Now, if it's all verifiable by external sources, it's disgusting and it makes me terribly sad about some Americans' values. Sigh.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yeah, i haven't gone source-hunting on this story...

[rmd.livejournal.com]

although i wouldn't think it was done with malice. i suspect some of it was done as "well, these are expired here, but i'm sure they're still good, and china can use them..."

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

True, but then we're not showing a whole lotta faith in those expiry dates, which sends its own message.

Sigh. This is why I can only get so far in talking about politics/current events before I start hitting my head with rocks. It hurts less.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I suspect that expiry dates on stuff sold in the US are on the extremely conservative side because of the legal liability and tort climate in this country. That's not a consideration in China.

[geofizz.livejournal.com]

I was researching something recently about expired drugs because as a bachelor type I don't tend to go through an entire stock of pills before it expires. Advice from an RN was that except for antibiotics, insulin and some other prescription medications, the worst that happens is that it's less efficacious. This article (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05150/512789.stm) mentions a study that was done for the military to use expired meds so they wouldn't have to flush their entire stock every 2-3 years.

The bottom line on expiry is that drug manufacturers only test 4-5 years at most on their own lines (and reformulate as time goes on) and shorten those expiry dates so that they're in the clear if a medicine doesn't work after that date.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's about what I expected.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

There was a case, either here or in UK, where companies were getting around hazardous waste dumping regulations by donating truly obsolete computers to India and Africa.

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that drug companies have been known to donate expired drugs so that they can write them off as a tax deduction rather than marking them down as a loss.

That's just so typical of them....

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Any smallpox blankets in the shipment?

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Excuse me while I rant...

There were some hurricane folks here that needed furniture and stuff for a place they're staying in indefintely, and it just made me want to hit something when some of the local fundie churches were sending, basically, truckloads of junk to us for them. Broken, dirty, really useless junk that we basically sent back when we were there to tell them no.

The family, itself, was just so polite they actually took stuff they couldn't ever use, and I actually made a trip back to the church with their trash and had a few words with their director of charity about what the heck were they thinking sending this stuff? The Bible says to give the *first* of your stuff, not the fucking dregs, and when I pointed out chapter and verse they were reduced to stammering puddles. Still...

I'm still really angry as to the kind of mentality allows this, especially from folks that are supposed to be taking The Word literally.

Of course, the same church that sent the broken stuff, that Sunday, was talking about how the hurricanes were God's vengence on sinners... so maybe that's the connection, or something. What a crock.



Ahem. Sorry. Yeah.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yay holy rollers!

next up, readings from the gospel of the vengeful grumpy apostle.