Chinese herbal 'doctor' walks free despite selling pills which gave woman cancer

Ying "Susan" Wu sold the tiny brown "Xie Gan Wan" tablets to Patricia Booth for more than five years from a shop in Chelmsford, Essex.

Mrs Booth, 58, began taking the pills three times a day to treat a skin condition but they ended up destroying her kidneys and giving her cancer.

But an Old Bailey judge ruled that because the sale of traditional Chinese medicines was totally unregulated, there was no evidence that Wu knew of the potential harm.

The judge today threw out a charge of "administering a noxious substance" against the 48-year-old and she pleaded guilty to a series of lesser counts.

Wu, of Holland-on-Sea, Essex, received a conditional discharge from Judge Jeremy Roberts.

But the case prompted immediate demands for full government regulation of the trade.

The Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine, which represents more than 450 practitioners, said the case highlighted "the urgent need for the statutory regulation of herbal medicine in the UK".

The court heard that Mrs Booth took the tablets from the Chinese Herbal Medical Centre in Chelmsford between 1997 and 2002.

Months after she stopped taking them she had to undergo an urgent blood transfusion. An analysis of the pills showed they contained a banned substance, aristolochic acid.

Her health deteriorated to such an extent that she had to have her kidneys removed, she contracted urinary tract cancer, and she later suffered a heart attack.

Mrs Booth, a grandmother, had been in good health when she started taking the pills, but she must now go to hospital three times a week for dialysis.

She told the court that, when she raised concerns about the safety of the pills, she was reassured by a man who worked at the shop that it was as safe as Coca-Cola.

Mrs Booth, who gave evidence via videolink because she was too frail to travel to court, told how she began paying £6 a bottle, later rising to £7, for the medicine, returning every 10 to 14 days to buy about three bottles a time.

Today Wu pleaded guilty to five charges relating to the sale of the pills to Mrs Booth.

Four similar counts were allowed to lie on file while a further four relating to unauthorised possession of medicines - which she had faced jointly with shop owner Thin "Patrick" Wong, 47, of Southend - were dropped earlier in the case.

When the trial started last week, Wu had faced a more serious allegation that she administered a noxious substance to Mrs Booth so as to endanger life or inflict grievous bodily harm.

But the judge said the 1861 legislation appeared to have been designed for "the days of Victorian poisoners" and cases such as the "husband who slipped some poison into his wife's cocoa".