Artificial Heart Implants Require Prior Approval by Chinese Government

The Chinese government is clamping tighter regulations on ethically controversial diagnostic and therapeutic technologies.

Consequently artificial heart implants, homogeneous organ transplants, and the like would require prior government sanction.

Therapeutic Cloning
Encyclopedia section of medindia explains in brief about Therapeutic Cloning

    The regulation goes in to effect May 1. Hospitals already using the technologies are required to report to the Ministry for verification of qualifications within six months after that date.

    The Ministry of Health (MOH) said its aim is to prevent abuses of those medical technologies. Previously, only some needed government approval, it said, without giving further details.

    Pei Xuetao, an expert on stem cells at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, told Xinhua Wednesday that this is the government's first complete system to oversee the clinical use of high-risk or ethically controversial medical technologies.

    "However," Pei said, "the difficulties for the MOH lie in the qualification verification process."

    The Ministry stated it would examine whether hospitals and medical institutes using those technologies have qualified medical experts, sufficient equipment and quality supervision measures. It would also compare standards with other countries.

Therapeutic cloning by regenerating stem cells from heart muscles
The cardiac muscle cells were obtained from the heart tissue of human volunteers

The Ministry said it would appoint experts on medicine, law, ethics and management to examine the qualifications of these medical institutions.

Pei, also director of the Institute of Blood Transfusion at the academy, said hospitals should be further guided on what tests to conduct and what data to obtain for the verification process.

Source-Medindia
GPL