China investigates into Baidu after student death
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E-mail CNTV, May 3, 2016
The Cyberspace Administration of China is to dispatch an investigation team, together with the Industry & Commerce authority and the Health authority, to investigate Baidu, a Chinese search engine giant, over the death of college student Wei Zexi.
The death of the college student has ignited debate in Chinese cyberspace over search engine Baidu and a Beijing-based paramilitary hospital.
21-year-old Wei Zexi died of a rare form of soft tissue cancer last month.
He turned to Baidu for help and found a biomedical department under the Second Hospital of Beijing Armed Police Corps, which boasts an advanced medical treatment for his disease.
But after spending 200 thousand yuan, or 31 thousand US dollars, there was no improvement to his condition.
When he was alive, Wei published a post on Zhihu, a question-and-answer website, criticizing Baidu for leading people to false medical information, as well as the hospital for misleading advertising.
He said in the post that the hospital staff claimed the treatment was part of a research collaboration with the Stanford medical school and had a cure rate as high as 80 percent.
Wei's family says they trusted the treatment because it was promoted by one of the military hospitals which are considered credible, and the attending doctor had appeared on many mainstream media platforms including the China Central Television.
Recent reports say Stanford's medical school has denied any link to such collaboration in China, while the experimental treatment the Chinese hospital promoted had been given up abroad due to poor performance before entering the clinical trial stage.
Also according to the reports, the responsible department in the Armed Police Corps hospital has been outsourced to a private medical company.
It has since been closed.
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