"Transfer medicine" hidden on the Internet
There are still traces of "fetal transfer drugs" on the Internet.
Recently, the reporter noticed that in a variety of pregnancy and parenting apps, there are pregnant women claiming that they have taken "transfer medicine."
A mother who claimed to have "two female treasures" said that when she was pregnant with her third child, she was afraid that her mother-in-law would be angry, so she bit her scalp and drank "fetal transfer medicine."
Some women claimed that because they wanted to have a boy, they took the "transplantation pill" when they were 42 days pregnant, but the girl was born in the end.
Some women said that they regretted taking the "transplantation pill", and others reported that they encountered the situation of "the mother-in-law asked to take the pill. Some people refused to take it, and some found that the drug was secretly placed in the food."
No one can tell how long this medicine that claims to "birth boys" has a history.
There are relevant records in ancient books of the Jin Dynasty at least 1700 years ago.
In recent years, although many doctors have filmed short videos exposing the scam of "transfer medicine", the media has repeatedly reported cases in which pregnant women in various regions gave birth to deformed babies by taking "transfer medicine".
For decades, the rumors and blows about the "magic medicine for male birth" have never stopped, but it has never disappeared.
On a pregnancy app, some netizens voted, and 14% of them still choose to believe in the effect of "transfer medicine".
On January 8, 2021, some media reported that a 28-year-old woman who was given birth by her mother-in-law and suffered cheating from her husband was "recovering a failed marriage and want to have a son", so she bought it on an e-commerce platform and claimed that she had no side effects. , Useless "transfer medicine" with full refund.
After taking the medicine for a few months, the woman gave birth to a girl. After that, she began to experience many adverse reactions, including growing body hair, frequent stomach pains, menopause, etc. The doctor diagnosed her as having ovarian syndrome.
In 2012, in Zhumadian, Henan Province, a child was born with "dysplasia and sexual abnormalities" because his mother took the reproductive drug during pregnancy; in 2017, in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, a 4-year-old girl "has both male reproductive organs and Female reproductive organs"; in 2019, in Huaian, Anhui, a 15-year-old girl was found to have "no uterus and one ovary missing".
The reporter's investigation found that behind this was a group of "illegal medical practitioners" hiding in various provinces.
Some of the people who sell drugs for "baosheng boy" are fortune-telling, some are opening village clinics, some drug sellers have five daughters themselves, and some use new reproductive technology to provide services illegally.
They exist in villages, towns or cities in Henan, Shandong, Guangxi and other provinces. Those "magic medicines" are delivered to pregnant women across the country by express delivery.
The person who sells the "transfer drug"
In January 2021, a woman surnamed Zhou in Changle County, Weifang City, Shandong Province, told reporters that she had a traditional Chinese medicine pill for "being a boy" in her hand. It has been passed down for five generations and has more than 1,000 buyers every year.
A man named Li Jinmao who claims to live in Dengzhou City, Henan Province told reporters that he can guarantee that pregnant women will change their babies within "40 days of pregnancy."
When the reporter falsely claimed that his wife was pregnant and contacted Li Jinmao, he first "calculated" and told reporters half an hour later: "Ninety-five percent are girls!"
He told reporters that within 40 days of pregnancy, the genitals of the fetus have not yet formed, "Yin but Yang".
The secret formula he provided allows the fetus to grow out of the boy's genitals, which is "100% effective."
The "transformation medicine" in his hand is composed of more than 10 Chinese herbal medicines. Some medicines need to be collected from the mountains, and the total cost is 5,000 yuan.
Later on the phone, Li Jinmao said that his hometown is Shiyan, Hubei, and he now lives in Dengzhou City.
About 30 years ago, in order to avoid the "superbirth", he fled to Henan and met a person who passed his secret recipe and was called a "fairy" by him.
After "Shenxian" passed away in 2008, he began to sell "reincarnation medicine."
Those drug sellers always point the source of the secret recipe to a mysterious "master."
Another man who sells "transplantation drugs" claimed that he had spent 160,000 yuan to learn "Science Student Men and Women Law" from a master in Qingdao.
The business card he posted on the WeChat Moments of Friends said "Receive Disciple".
His name is Li Fengchuan, born in 1988, from Feixian, Shandong.
He claimed that drinking the secret Chinese medicine in his hand can control the sex of the fetus.
According to him, after a woman becomes pregnant, she only needs to boil the two-flavored wild Chinese medicinal materials into soup and "just take a sip."
The asking price of medicine for boys is different from that for girls. Boys charge 50,000 yuan and girls charge 10,000 yuan.
He is willing to sign a compensation agreement. If the child is not a boy after taking the medicine, he will pay 1 million yuan.
"Girls belong to others, and boys belong to themselves." Li Fengchuan said in Mandarin mixed with dialects.
He told reporters that his wife became pregnant again in 2015. It was the third year of their marriage. His daughter was 3 years old. He wanted a boy. He used to inquire about the secret recipe for a boy in Feixian County.
Later, I met a master who sold this secret recipe at the bus station.
The wife drank the medicine and gave birth to a boy.
He started to sell the medicine everywhere.
Li Fengchuan claimed that in the past 5 years, his medicine has given birth to 3 boys and 1 girl.
Those who came to find him included decorators, roast chicken, and pork. Most of them already had two or three girls.
"The moment the sperm and the egg are combined, the sex of the fetus is determined." Wang Xingling, director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Henan Maternal and Child Health Hospital, told reporters that the sex of the fetus cannot be changed.
But she often meets the request of the questioner to choose the sex of the fetus.
Recently, she also received a call from an acquaintance. There are two girls in the family who want a boy in particular, asking if she can use some medicine.
Wang Xingling told reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that she met a woman and almost kneeled to her in order to give birth to a boy.
The woman claimed to have no place in the family because she did not give birth to a boy.
"She works outside, earns money on her own, and dare not go home. When she returns to the village, her mother-in-law will drive her with a brick." Wang Xingling said.
That woman told Wang Xingling, including her daughter who was in junior high school, said, "Grandma is not good to you, and father beats you, then you give him a boy and it will be fine."
Wang Xingling felt uncomfortable, but she couldn't help it, and then the woman left.
The hospital is equipped with psychological counselors to ease the psychological barriers of such patients.
However, those who sell the "baosheng boy" medicine are extremely confident in giving birth to boys.
Liang Shaoyuan of Wuzhou, Guangxi has set up a website called "Nan Treasure Collection" for this purpose, claiming that using his ancestral traditional Chinese medicine secret recipe, "males and females under the age of 40 are sure to have a boy in one go."
He told reporters that people who are pregnant need a rooster that has not been castrated as a drug primer at a cost of 3,800 yuan.
His WeChat Moments showed cases in which drug buyers from nearly 20 provinces including Guangxi, Shanghai, and Sichuan successfully gave birth to boys in 2020.
He told reporters that almost 1,000 people have bought his medicine on WeChat. Most of them are born in the 80s and 90s. “Ninety percent of them must be successful (birth a boy).” The medicinal materials are "pure health-care Chinese medicinal materials." Can't explain the drug principle.
During the interview, some people who sold the "baosheng boy" medicine said that their medicine had no side effects, and some people would say, "If you believe it, take it if you don't believe it."
A 49-year-old woman in Bijie, Guizhou, told reporters that originally she didn't believe it, but her niece gave birth to three girls in a row. The fourth child born after taking the fetal replacement medicine is a son. The child is now 5 years old.
She said that some of them had to have sons even if they hid.
A girl said angrily on the Internet that she only knew when she grew up that her mother had taken the "recarriage pill" when she was pregnant. Fortunately, her body is not serious now.
Never disappeared for years
Most of the time, "transplantation drugs" enter the public eye and are related to "gender abnormalities".
According to doctors, there are two types of "fetal transformation drugs" on the market. One is the use of androgens, such as methyltestosterone, and the other is Chinese herbal medicine or home remedies.
No matter what kind of "transfer medicine", it will not help to give birth to a boy, but will be harmful to pregnant women and fetuses.
Professor He Fangfang, the founder of Peking Union Medical College Hospital's Reproductive Medicine Center, has been in medicine for more than 40 years, and he encountered a case of gender deformity caused by taking "transfer medicine".
About 21 years ago, He Fangfang was in charge of the gynecological endocrinology ward at Xiehe Hospital and saw a "boy" squatting to urinate.
"The problem with'he' is that he can't stand and urinate like other boys. We checked the child's chromosomes and found that the child is actually a girl." He Fangfang told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily, "What she calls a'penis' It’s actually a little skin protruding from the vaginal opening."
Later, He Fangfang learned that the parents of the child were a rural couple. After they gave birth to two girls, they wanted a boy. "(Early pregnancy) took a medicine and said it could turn a girl into a boy. The medicine is actually methyltestosterone."
After the child is born, "They think it is a boy, so they raise it as a boy, and also dress as a boy."
A paper published in "Journal of China Medical University" once summarized 342 cases of female pseudohermaphroditism from 1994 to 2009. The cause was mainly congenital adrenal hyperplasia, but 33 cases (accounting for 9.65%) were patients. 'S mother took androgenic drugs such as methyltestosterone during pregnancy.
Previous studies have shown that pregnant women taking drugs with androgenic effects during pregnancy may cause the virilization of female fetuses.
There are also pregnant women who have miscarried their fetuses after taking "transfer medicine."
Even after vulvar plastic surgery, after the patient is discharged from the hospital, he may need to adjust his residence and school to restore his gender, and may not be able to have children in the future.
From 1998 to 2004, Huainan Xinhua Hospital in Anhui Province treated 9 "patients with female pseudohermaphroditism caused by drugs". They "have similar conditions and live in the same area", and their mothers have taken the local "transfer drug". ", actually "Methyltestosterone".
Nowadays, many obstetrics and gynecology and pediatricians told reporters that in recent years, they have not encountered a baby born with androgen, and patients generally do not take the initiative to disclose whether they have taken "transplantation drugs."
In the past 30 years in his medical career, pediatric surgeon Luo Hong has only encountered two or three cases of taking "transfer medicine".
Although they all feel that their patriarchy has improved, they are still being consulted on how to give birth to boys or girls.
The reporter noticed that, in addition to the "transfer medicine", some online shopping platforms now sell goods under the banner of "pregnancy boy" and "boy birth medicine".
Most of them are alkaline calcium tablets, but they claim that they "can increase the chance of having a boy". The principle is that "Y sperm has the highest survival rate in an alkaline body."
On January 10, 2021, a reporter searched on an online shopping platform for "Alkaline Precious" and "Boy-bearing Medicine", and there were many shops selling "Alkaline Calcium Tablets". Some customer service said that the product could "improve the chance of having a boy." "The probability is more than 80%", but there is no guarantee that a 100% boy will be born, and there is no medicine used to regulate the birth of a girl.
Lin Xi (a pseudonym), a post-90s mother in Shanghai, tried a similar approach.
She told reporters that she gave birth to a boy in her first birth and wanted a girl in her second birth. So after consulting a doctor in a private hospital, she prepared for pregnancy six months in advance. Not only did she take medicine every day, she also stewed chicken, duck, and fish in an attempt to regulate her body. Acidic physique, but failed in the end, and gave birth to a boy, "unreliable".
As early as 1971, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yale University School of Medicine, published a paper in the international journal Fertility and Sterility on "the influence of pH (pH) on human X and Y sperm movement". , The results show that the movement of human sperm carrying the Y chromosome is not affected by the pH value.
However, alkaline foods such as alkaline calcium tablets are used by some women to regulate the birth of a boy. Among them, eating more hot and dry noodles before pregnancy is also considered to help give birth to a boy.
Some media reported in 2018 that many shops were selling products such as "Alkaline Pregnancy Bao" for pre-pregnancy treatment on the online shopping platform. They were suspected of false propaganda, and related shops were later removed.
However, there are still books selling "Secrets of Having a Boy" on this online shopping platform.
There are also people who sell “reproductive medicine” told reporters that after online platforms cracked down on shops selling “folk prescriptions” and “secret prescriptions” in 2018, they moved to social platforms for sales.
Li Fengchuan initially posted his business card on a short video platform, but his account was blocked.
He posted small advertisements everywhere in Feixian County, was caught twice by the city management, fined 400 yuan, and never posted it again.
He now mainly promotes in the "Circle of Friends".
Other possibilities for baby boy
The secret recipe for male birth has been passed down to this day along with the patriarchal gender concept.
In ancient times, in order to ask for a baby boy, people would ask gods for children, or search for strange folk recipes.
The ancient book "Feng Tu Ji" of the Jin Dynasty records: "The flower is said to be suitable for men, and pregnant women wear them, and they must give birth to men. Also known as Hemerocallis." In the "Materia Medica", it is also called "different daughter".
During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, there was an alchemist who offered to the emperor the god of birth.
Nowadays, this group of illegal medical practitioners have gone from wandering in rural towns in the early days to hiding in the Internet, and some even moved the secret recipe for male birth into rural clinics or Chinese medicine halls.
A website that claims to have a secret recipe for male birth says, "Smell the qi, no need for oral administration."
The website named "Men's Treasure Collection" built by Liang Shaoyuan, a native of Guangxi, was originally named "Good Every Day".
In Tanghe, Henan, a woman who opened a Chinese medicine hall claimed that part of her family's pregnancy preparation products went to the hospital.
Her family’s ancestral medicine for boys was made into small black pills, packed in transparent sealed bags, and delivered to all parts of the country. Sales agents were also recruited.
In Changle, Shandong, a woman surnamed Zhou told reporters that she had a secret recipe passed down from her ancestors, which had been passed down for five generations.
The self-made pure Chinese medicine pill can regulate the birth of a boy before conception. "Boys can have a fetus, but girls can't."
In the video she sent, the brown shengzi pill was wrapped in a transparent plastic bag. She said that the courier that sent the pill was sent out almost every day.
The relevant person in charge of the Changle County Health Comprehensive Law Enforcement Brigade told reporters that he had not received relevant reports before.
However, one of his classmates once bought medicine for pre-pregnancy conditioning from an old traditional Chinese medicine doctor in another place. "It didn't help to eat it, and she gave birth to a girl."
In the past few years, he only dealt with a case where a foreigner entered Changle to collect blood to determine the sex of a fetus.
"If a report is received, it will be dealt with in accordance with the crackdown on'illegal medical practice'. The sale of such counterfeit and inferior medicines in regular clinics is also illegal, and illegal medical gains will be confiscated and heavy fines will be imposed." The person in charge said.
The staff of the Tanghe County Health and Health Commission in Henan Province told reporters that such complaints are generally cracked down by the Health Supervision Office in accordance with the law.
On the Judgment Documents website, the reporter found that in 2016, a village doctor in Qixian County, Henan Province was sentenced to illegal medical practice for selling “conversion drugs”. He was detained for one month and fined 5,000 yuan.
"These medicines can be popular, the root reason is that people have a great social demand for'birth boys and girls'. In rural areas, boys are preferred, some people think that only boys can inherit property." Deputy Director, Shanyang County Health Bureau, Shaanxi Province, Xu Yucai, deputy chief physician of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Traditional Chinese Medicine, told reporters that he had not been exposed to cases of taking "transplantation medicine", but there were people around him taking pre-pregnancy conditioning medicine.
Xu Yucai said that the sale of so-called "conversion drugs" and drugs for the conditioning of boys and girls is illegal to practice medicine, and it is illegal whether or not they have medical qualifications.
If there is a complaint, the Health Commission will investigate and deal with it in conjunction with the industry and commerce, public security, and drug regulatory authorities.
But he has not been exposed to similar cases or complaints for many years.
"There is very little publicity for things like this, and they are all done privately." Xu Yucai said.
In order to give birth to a boy, three-generation IVF technology is also being used.
The reporter contacted a company named "International Reproductive Fertility Center". The company claimed to provide three-generation IVF surrogacy services nationwide in Guangzhou or Chongqing. The cost of birthing boys was 600,000 yuan, with public hospital doctors participating. .
"The third-generation test-tube baby can choose the sex, but our country strictly prohibits (gender selection)." Wang Xingling told reporters that when the choice is necessary, the man or the woman has a genetic disease, and the embryos with the genetic disease gene should be removed. Obtain a normal embryo.
Gender selection based on this technology mostly exists in the underground market.
Wang Xingling often sees advertisements for "boys born in pregnancy" and "test-tube surrogacy" in the bathroom and patient waiting area at the Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Henan Province, sometimes in the elevator or carved on the wall with a knife.
"Our hygienist cleans up every day, and it's impossible to prevent it. He came to us to promote it, just to take our infertility patients away."
She once encountered a patient who was deceived by the advertisement of "Baby Boy".
Wang Xingling told reporters that the patient initially claimed to be an IVF in a hospital in the province.
But this patient is pregnant with triplets.
“At most, every province has transplanted two embryos. It is impossible to transplant three embryos.” Wang Xingling was puzzled. After verifying that there was no such case, she asked the patient again and the patient told her the truth.
The patient was originally undergoing a maternity checkup in a hospital in the province. Before he was formally undergoing IVF, he was deceived by a promise that “test-tube baby will give birth to boys”.
However, after pregnancy, the patient had to go to the hospital for fetal reduction due to excessive stimulation of the ovaries.
"At that time, the patient's requirements were lowered. It is no matter whether it is a boy or a girl, it is enough to carry a healthy child." Wang Xingling said.
In a civil judgment, a couple in Jinsha County, Guizhou Province, sued the fertility company for failing to give birth to a boy through IVF.
The couple had a daughter before marriage, and wanted a boy after marriage.
In 2018, the plaintiff and the defendant signed a "second-generation test tube standard agreement", stipulating that the defendant would do the test tube baby for the plaintiff. The success rate of giving birth to a boy was 80%, and the total cost was 110,000 yuan.
However, on May 10, 2019, the plaintiff’s wife gave birth to twin girls.
The plaintiff and his wife believed that the defendant had breached the contract and the matter went to court, demanding the defendant to return the payment and make compensation.
The Huadu District People’s Court of Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, which heard the case, held that the plaintiff’s actions violated the law, violated the ethical principles of human assisted reproductive technology, and violated social public order and good customs, and the agreement between the two parties should be invalid.
The claim of the plaintiff was not supported by the court, and the defendant was dealt with separately according to law.
Not only did the couple fail to give birth to a boy, they were fined more than 120,000 yuan by the local government for overbearing.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Li Qiang Source: China Youth Daily
Version 07, January 13, 2021