Bacteria at levels ‘only seen in terminal Aids patients’: doctors await verdict over fatal beauty blunder
Dr Stephen Chow Heung-wing’s DR Group launched an unproven cancer therapy in 2012 for use on healthy patients, but the blood extraction, processing and infusion treatment saw one woman die and three fall seriously ill, including his own sister
Hong Kong doctor turned businessman Stephen Chow Heung-wing had a grand plan to help China defeat cancer and improve the health of the country’s ageing population.
But just five years later he ended up a defendant in a criminal trial involving the worst beauty treatment blunder in the city’s history.
On Monday jurors retired to deliberate the fate of Chow, 63, who is accused of manslaughter after a patient in his clinic died and three others fell seriously ill.
Horrific details of a Hong Kong beauty clinic treatment gone fatally wrong
His beauty therapy empire launched an unproven cancer treatment in 2012 that the company deemed also had anti-ageing benefits for healthy people. It was based on injections thought to boost the immune system by enhancing cells in the body capable of killing their mutated, cancer-causing counterparts.
“I believe there were great prospects for this technology,” Chow said in court in September.
But his plan backfired after treating just over 40 customers.
His own sister, a lung cancer patient, and three healthy women fell seriously ill after undergoing the therapy. One died on October 10, 2012 after lethal bacteria brought multi-organ failure. Doctors said the blood poisoning Chan Yuen-lam experienced had been “most catastrophic” and likened her bacterial levels to that of “terminally ill Aids patients”. Another woman was forced to have her legs and four fingers amputated, while a third had to learn how to walk again.
