Word: vichai
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...Then along came Vichai Jirathitikal's little pink pills. Branded V-1 Immunitor and distributed free of cost?for now, anyway?the new wonder medicine is raising patients' hopes and inspiring reveries of recovery. For one thing, it was invented by a bona fide pharmacist?never mind that his scientific expertise was with prawns and not people. For another, dozens of his patients are eager and willing to vouch for Vichai's miracle...
...medical profession have done likewise. Some of Vichai's critics question the science behind the pills. Others question the company he keeps: his principal backer is Salang Bunnag, an ex-police general who was forced to resign from the force in 1998 after members of a drug gang that publicly surrendered tohim were taken off and, minutes later, shot dead. Vichai says Salang believed in his cure when the medical establishment ignored...
...Vichai has doled out V-1 free of charge to more than 20,000 people. Hanging out at the clinic, there are a dozen volunteers doing odd jobs who claim that V-1 saved their lives. "I was brought here wrapped in sheets because my sores were bleeding so bad," says Konokpal, 38. "My family had booked a temple for my funeral rites. Now I can run, catch buses?I feel like I can fly." Skeptics question such testimonies. Senator Jon Ungphakorn, an AIDS campaigner, alleges that a number of people who took V-1 over the past year have...
...This spring, the Ministry of Public Health asked Vichai to let scientists study nine V-1 patients over six months. But after three months, Vichai claimed that the patients had all wandered off and could not be traced. The health authorities stopped the tests in mid-June. Their verdict: inconclusive. That hasn't deterred the pharmacist and the ex-police chief, however. On June 2, Salang organized a free handout of V-1 at a Bangkok soccer stadium. It was a spectacle right out of a medieval plague tableau: hollow-eyed and ravaged by the disease, more than...