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| Guilty plea in Chinese herb case | Guilty plea in Chinese herb case |
| (20 minutes later) | |
| A practitioner of Chinese medicine has pleaded guilty to selling a banned substance to a woman who went on to develop kidney failure and cancer. | |
| Ying "Susan" Wu, of Holland-on-Sea in Essex is on trial at the Old Bailey for supplying pills containing aristolochic acid to a civil servant. | Ying "Susan" Wu, of Holland-on-Sea in Essex is on trial at the Old Bailey for supplying pills containing aristolochic acid to a civil servant. |
| Patricia Booth took the pills, bought at the Chinese Herbal Medical Centre in Chelmsford, Essex, for over five years. | |
| Now very sick, she has been providing evidence to the trial over video-link. | Now very sick, she has been providing evidence to the trial over video-link. |
| Mrs Booth was in her mid-40s when she first sought help from the Chelmsford practitioner in 1997 for stubborn patches of spots on her face. | |
| The Old Bailey heard the products had been advertised as "safe and natural". | |
| But they contained a substance - aristolochic acid - which when she was first sold them, should only have been given under prescription, and which was later banned. | |
| The court heard Mrs Booth became ill moths after she stopped taking the pills. She was diagnosed with kidney failure, and later with cancer of the urinary tract - both allegedly caused by the pills. | |
| Ms Wu pleaded to selling prescription only medicines without authorisation and to selling a banned substance. | |
| But an Old Bailey judge ruled that, as the sale of traditional Chinese medicines was totally unregulated, there was no evidence that she knew of the potential harm. | |
| A charge of "administering a noxious substance" was earlier thrown out. | |
| The defendant is due to be sentenced later. |