New York Methodist Hospital is now using a new, improved version of a common technology to dissolve kidney stones.
Extracorporeal shock-wave lithotripsy is a minimally invasive surgical procedure used to treat patients with kidney stones. Physicians in NYM’s Division of Urology, headed by Ivan Grunberger, M.D., make up the first team in the United States to use a new lithotripsy device that offers improved results. Kidney stones are solid masses of tiny crystals that can form in the kidneys and cause bleeding, kidney damage or ongoing urinary tract infections.
It is estimated that more than one million patients are treated with ESWL annually in the United States. “The new generation of lithotripter is capable of generating shock waves with the same intensity from one firing to the next, something that older models could not do,” said Grunberger. “This makes the pulverization of the kidney stones more accurate, and also means that a higher number of patients will be stone-free after the first treatment.”
The new lithotripter can also monitor patient movements in real time with revolutionary infrared tracking. If the patient moves slightly during the procedure, the machine locates the kidney stone and completes treatment. The extended penetration depth of the shock waves also allows for treatment of patients who are obese.
“With the added conveniences of a handheld ultrasound probe to locate the stones, and the ability to generate consistent shock waves, we can treat lithotripsy patients with more precision and accuracy than ever before,” said Grunberger. “The new ESWL technology gives our urologists the ability to better target and monitor stones, ensuring better patient outcomes.”
New York Methodist Hospital, a voluntary, acute-care teaching facility located in Park Slope, houses 651 inpatient beds (including bassinets) and provides services to almost 38,000 inpatients each year. An additional 300,000 outpatient visits and services are logged annually.
2011年12月27日星期二
2011年12月18日星期日
Synthetic sales should be felony
The Rutherford County Commission responded to a mother's plea Thursday by passing a resolution urging for synthetic drug dealing to a be a felony.
"It has to become a felony offense," said Brooke Wyant, a Riverdale High School teacher who shared the story of her son's struggles with addiction to synthetic drugs after attending MTSU on a full-ride scholarship. "Life hasn't been the same. We're in financial ruin. He went through thousands of dollars in a manner of months."
All 20 present commissioners voted for the
resolution, which asks the Tennessee General Assembly to make it a felony for those making, distributing and selling synthetic drugs. Commissioner Steve Sandlin was absent because he's dealing with kidney stones.
Commissioner Robert Peay Jr. also called for the document be sent to all 95 counties in Tennessee to seek similar resolutions, and all of the commissioners agreed.
The resolution noted that the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office, Murfreesboro Police, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, State Attorney General's Office and the Rutherford County District Attorney's Office in September conducted a raid in which 36 convenience stores in the county were found to be selling synthetic marijuana and designer stimulants for up to $30 per package.
Wyant told the commission that her son Dylan Evans stole from his family so he could buy synthetic drugs from local convenience stores. He ended up having to be rushed to the hospital after overdosing on prescription pills when the mother tried to prevent him from going back out to buy more synthetic drugs. The family now faces a $22,000 debt for his 30 days of rehabilitation treatment.
Since then, the son has visited Blackman High to warn others about the dangers of synthetic drugs.
"He wants to help," the mother said.
Synthetic drugs can put a family in upheaval, Wyant added.
In addition to the mother speaking before the commission, Kathy Hines of the TN-ZERO task force on stopping synthetic drugs and Sheriff's Lt. Egon Grissom spoke.
"Our children are dying at astronomical rates," said Hines, a La Vergne resident who is retired from a career as a detective in Detroit. "One out of nine teens have used some form of synthetic drugs."
Grissom noted that local convenience stores are selling synthetic drugs under packages called bath salts or black fertilizer to simulate marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and Ecstasy.
"These drugs are much worse than any other drug you know because of the psychotic effects," Grissom said.
He noted that the National Poison Control Center reported that the first seven months of 2011 had 13 times as many cases of people harmed from synthetic drugs than in all of 2010.
To put a stop to it, synthetic drug dealers need to face punishments much stricter than a $200 misdemeanor fine, Grissom said.
"Put some bite into it," Grissom said.
In addition to the resolution on synthetic drugs, the commission approved spending $224,000 more to repair the brick exterior at the County Jail, which is structurally sound otherwise. The county will use $199,000 from development taxes that collect $1,500 per new home and $25,000 from the Sheriff's Drug Enforcement Administration fund.
"It has to become a felony offense," said Brooke Wyant, a Riverdale High School teacher who shared the story of her son's struggles with addiction to synthetic drugs after attending MTSU on a full-ride scholarship. "Life hasn't been the same. We're in financial ruin. He went through thousands of dollars in a manner of months."
All 20 present commissioners voted for the
resolution, which asks the Tennessee General Assembly to make it a felony for those making, distributing and selling synthetic drugs. Commissioner Steve Sandlin was absent because he's dealing with kidney stones.
Commissioner Robert Peay Jr. also called for the document be sent to all 95 counties in Tennessee to seek similar resolutions, and all of the commissioners agreed.
The resolution noted that the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office, Murfreesboro Police, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, State Attorney General's Office and the Rutherford County District Attorney's Office in September conducted a raid in which 36 convenience stores in the county were found to be selling synthetic marijuana and designer stimulants for up to $30 per package.
Wyant told the commission that her son Dylan Evans stole from his family so he could buy synthetic drugs from local convenience stores. He ended up having to be rushed to the hospital after overdosing on prescription pills when the mother tried to prevent him from going back out to buy more synthetic drugs. The family now faces a $22,000 debt for his 30 days of rehabilitation treatment.
Since then, the son has visited Blackman High to warn others about the dangers of synthetic drugs.
"He wants to help," the mother said.
Synthetic drugs can put a family in upheaval, Wyant added.
In addition to the mother speaking before the commission, Kathy Hines of the TN-ZERO task force on stopping synthetic drugs and Sheriff's Lt. Egon Grissom spoke.
"Our children are dying at astronomical rates," said Hines, a La Vergne resident who is retired from a career as a detective in Detroit. "One out of nine teens have used some form of synthetic drugs."
Grissom noted that local convenience stores are selling synthetic drugs under packages called bath salts or black fertilizer to simulate marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and Ecstasy.
"These drugs are much worse than any other drug you know because of the psychotic effects," Grissom said.
He noted that the National Poison Control Center reported that the first seven months of 2011 had 13 times as many cases of people harmed from synthetic drugs than in all of 2010.
To put a stop to it, synthetic drug dealers need to face punishments much stricter than a $200 misdemeanor fine, Grissom said.
"Put some bite into it," Grissom said.
In addition to the resolution on synthetic drugs, the commission approved spending $224,000 more to repair the brick exterior at the County Jail, which is structurally sound otherwise. The county will use $199,000 from development taxes that collect $1,500 per new home and $25,000 from the Sheriff's Drug Enforcement Administration fund.
2011年11月2日星期三
'Belles' to ring in holiday season
Mix a Santa with a kidney stone, a church Christmas play with a cast stricken by food poisoning, a shepherd with a little red wagon, Elvis and a long-kept family secret, and you have Christmas Belles.
It’s a comedy that cast members promise will deliver the laughs.
“We still laugh at the lines at rehearsals, and we’ve heard them over and over,” said Debbie Fryer, who plays Geneva Musgrove, the longtime director of the church Christmas pageant.
This year, however, she’s been ousted by Honey Raye Futrell, a woman with a checkered past who is trying to make up for her wayward ways, and Miss Geneva is not really happy about it all.
“This is just a bunch of fun,” said Kay Gross, who plays Twink Futrell, recently jailed after she almost burned down the town trying to get back at her boyfriend, who had jilted her.
While some audience members might not be in the Christmas spirit quite so early in November when the production opens, cast members think the play is a good way to usher in the holiday season.
“I think it will get people into the spirit of the season,” said Fryer.
Even with all the laughs, there are some unexpected twists to bring that warm and fuzzy holiday feeling.
“There are a lot of tender moments,” Gross said.
It’s a comedy that cast members promise will deliver the laughs.
“We still laugh at the lines at rehearsals, and we’ve heard them over and over,” said Debbie Fryer, who plays Geneva Musgrove, the longtime director of the church Christmas pageant.
This year, however, she’s been ousted by Honey Raye Futrell, a woman with a checkered past who is trying to make up for her wayward ways, and Miss Geneva is not really happy about it all.
“This is just a bunch of fun,” said Kay Gross, who plays Twink Futrell, recently jailed after she almost burned down the town trying to get back at her boyfriend, who had jilted her.
While some audience members might not be in the Christmas spirit quite so early in November when the production opens, cast members think the play is a good way to usher in the holiday season.
“I think it will get people into the spirit of the season,” said Fryer.
Even with all the laughs, there are some unexpected twists to bring that warm and fuzzy holiday feeling.
“There are a lot of tender moments,” Gross said.
2011年10月27日星期四
Donor dads are meeting in Toronto
Two fathers who live worlds apart — one in the West Bank, the other in California — are meeting in Toronto for the first time this weekend.
The lives of Ismael Khatib, 45, a mechanic, and Reg Green, 82, a journalist, couldn’t be more different. And yet they are bound by a life-altering experience. They both lost their young sons to a gunman’s bullets. And they both allowed their dying children’s organs and tissue to be harvested for transplants.
As a result of two violent deaths — and the generosity of two grieving families — 11 lives were saved. Another two people regained their sight.
Khatib and Green are coming here for a 10-day mission to encourage Canadians to sign donor cards. At a more personal level, they are making the long trek to Canada to honour Ahmed, who was 11 when he died in 2005, and Nicholas, who was 7 when his life ended in 1994.
Their schedule will include a visit to Toronto General Hospital, walks in memory of the boys and organ and tissue donation drives in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7. The donor dads may take in a Maple Leaf game.
On Monday, with the support of MPPs from all parties, Conservative Frank Klees will introduce a bill to create an alert system, much like the Amber Alert, for children under 18 in urgent need of an organ or tissue transplant.
In a recent telephone interview with the Star, Green spoke enthusiastically about his meeting with Khatib. “There is a common thread of giving across a barrier in both his case and ours,” says Green.
The two men have conversed on Skype. Khatib, in a telephone interview from the West Bank, said the face-to-face meeting will bring a measure of good out of tragedy. “Meeting him will increase my conviction that what I did was right,” Khatib said through an interpreter.
Canada is the venue for Green and Kahtib’s first meeting because of the efforts of George Marcello, 56, who received liver transplants in 1995 and 2005. His health challenges have led him to devote himself full-time to fundraising and public-awareness campaigns.
It is Marcello who felt that bringing Green and Khatib to Canada would highlight the role that donors can play and go a long way to improving the dismal sign-up rate in Ontario. A former fitness trainer, he has organized walks through Ontario and across Canada through Step by Step, the charity he runs from his modest home in Little Italy that his parents left him and his siblings. His Torch of Life was blessed by Pope John Paul II in 2001 and has now been carried by children in rallies throughout Canada, the U.S. and Italy.
The visits of the two men are being made possible with help from the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the Canadian Peres Centre for Peace, Step by Step, Iman Ali Roukieh of the Muslim Girls School and several others, including Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Palestinian doctor whose three daughters and a niece were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli shelling.
Here are the stories of Nicholas and Ahmed.
Nicholas Green died on Oct. 1, 1994. Seven-year-old Nicholas, his parents, Reg and Maggie, and his sister, Eleanor, 4, were on a European holiday that had started in Switzerland a week before.
Late one night, as they drove down the highway from Naples to Sicily, a car raced up beside them. The two occupants shouted and gestured for Green to pull over. Sensing danger, he accelerated.
“The two cars raced beside each other,” Green said in a recent conversation from his home in La Canada, California. “Then there was a tremendous explosion and the window behind the driver’s window, where the two kids were sleeping, was blown in. A moment later the driver’s window was blown in.”
The car dropped back and disappeared.
Reg and Maggie, in the front seat, were frantic. Maggie looked back; both children seemed to be asleep. Reg sped down the road hoping to get help. About 15 kilometres along they came upon police and ambulances at another accident scene. Reg pulled over, and the extent of Nicholas’s injury became evident.
“When I opened the car door, the interior light came on and Nicholas didn’t move.” He looked closer and saw that the boy’s tongue was sticking out unnaturally. “I had been a journalist long enough to know that was a very bad sign.”
He had been shot in the base of the brain.
Two days later, the doctors told Reg and Maggie that they couldn’t save Nicholas. He was brain dead.
It was Maggie who asked doctors whether organs and tissue from their “magical little child” could be used for transplant.
Reg recreates that terrible moment: “I remember thinking, ‘How are we going to get through the rest of our lives without him?’ But then suddenly there was this possibility that somebody could benefit from this. There was that sense that, although he didn’t need that body any more there were a lot of people out there who desperately needed what that body could give.”
The lives of Ismael Khatib, 45, a mechanic, and Reg Green, 82, a journalist, couldn’t be more different. And yet they are bound by a life-altering experience. They both lost their young sons to a gunman’s bullets. And they both allowed their dying children’s organs and tissue to be harvested for transplants.
As a result of two violent deaths — and the generosity of two grieving families — 11 lives were saved. Another two people regained their sight.
Khatib and Green are coming here for a 10-day mission to encourage Canadians to sign donor cards. At a more personal level, they are making the long trek to Canada to honour Ahmed, who was 11 when he died in 2005, and Nicholas, who was 7 when his life ended in 1994.
Their schedule will include a visit to Toronto General Hospital, walks in memory of the boys and organ and tissue donation drives in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7. The donor dads may take in a Maple Leaf game.
On Monday, with the support of MPPs from all parties, Conservative Frank Klees will introduce a bill to create an alert system, much like the Amber Alert, for children under 18 in urgent need of an organ or tissue transplant.
In a recent telephone interview with the Star, Green spoke enthusiastically about his meeting with Khatib. “There is a common thread of giving across a barrier in both his case and ours,” says Green.
The two men have conversed on Skype. Khatib, in a telephone interview from the West Bank, said the face-to-face meeting will bring a measure of good out of tragedy. “Meeting him will increase my conviction that what I did was right,” Khatib said through an interpreter.
Canada is the venue for Green and Kahtib’s first meeting because of the efforts of George Marcello, 56, who received liver transplants in 1995 and 2005. His health challenges have led him to devote himself full-time to fundraising and public-awareness campaigns.
It is Marcello who felt that bringing Green and Khatib to Canada would highlight the role that donors can play and go a long way to improving the dismal sign-up rate in Ontario. A former fitness trainer, he has organized walks through Ontario and across Canada through Step by Step, the charity he runs from his modest home in Little Italy that his parents left him and his siblings. His Torch of Life was blessed by Pope John Paul II in 2001 and has now been carried by children in rallies throughout Canada, the U.S. and Italy.
The visits of the two men are being made possible with help from the National Congress of Italian Canadians, the Canadian Peres Centre for Peace, Step by Step, Iman Ali Roukieh of the Muslim Girls School and several others, including Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Palestinian doctor whose three daughters and a niece were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli shelling.
Here are the stories of Nicholas and Ahmed.
Nicholas Green died on Oct. 1, 1994. Seven-year-old Nicholas, his parents, Reg and Maggie, and his sister, Eleanor, 4, were on a European holiday that had started in Switzerland a week before.
Late one night, as they drove down the highway from Naples to Sicily, a car raced up beside them. The two occupants shouted and gestured for Green to pull over. Sensing danger, he accelerated.
“The two cars raced beside each other,” Green said in a recent conversation from his home in La Canada, California. “Then there was a tremendous explosion and the window behind the driver’s window, where the two kids were sleeping, was blown in. A moment later the driver’s window was blown in.”
The car dropped back and disappeared.
Reg and Maggie, in the front seat, were frantic. Maggie looked back; both children seemed to be asleep. Reg sped down the road hoping to get help. About 15 kilometres along they came upon police and ambulances at another accident scene. Reg pulled over, and the extent of Nicholas’s injury became evident.
“When I opened the car door, the interior light came on and Nicholas didn’t move.” He looked closer and saw that the boy’s tongue was sticking out unnaturally. “I had been a journalist long enough to know that was a very bad sign.”
He had been shot in the base of the brain.
Two days later, the doctors told Reg and Maggie that they couldn’t save Nicholas. He was brain dead.
It was Maggie who asked doctors whether organs and tissue from their “magical little child” could be used for transplant.
Reg recreates that terrible moment: “I remember thinking, ‘How are we going to get through the rest of our lives without him?’ But then suddenly there was this possibility that somebody could benefit from this. There was that sense that, although he didn’t need that body any more there were a lot of people out there who desperately needed what that body could give.”
2011年10月25日星期二
Kidney Pain!
Kidney stones are well-known to be one of the most painful experiences that we experience. For those who’ve been through it, it is compared to the pain of child birth. This short article will cover some kidney stone pain symptoms and what to look out for.Kidney stones pain signs and symptoms, in the more mild cases, could be inconvenient. In the much more serious cases, they can require surgery to remove, with enough pain to induce nausea or vomiting.
Initially, kidney stones had been known as the “silent stones”, because they don’t produce symptoms in the onset of forming. However, as the stones grow in size, they can trigger pain simply because they become much more difficult to pass. When the pain shows a pattern, and all other causes are ruled out, the remedy for kidney stones can start. Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms can consist of pain in the side, groin or lower back. Once the pain is not started by the position the person is sitting in, or by the position the individual moves to, as he or she looks for relief, this pain can be a symptom of kidney stones. The level of pain from these signs and symptoms can grow and recede in intensity.
Other kidney stone pain signs and symptoms which may be present can include painful urination, traces of blood in the urine, or an urgent feeling to go when it is not necessary. For men, there can also be testicular pain and penile pain. In the event the individual has developed an infection within the urinary tract, with the kidney stone, there might be chills or fever that accompany the pain. The good news is that most people have the ability to pass a kidney stone in 24-48 hours, with a large consumption of fluid.
Also, you will find remedies for your pain, as the stone is being passed. These treatments can include over-the-counter medicines. In the event the kidney stone pain signs and symptoms aren’t handled with the over-the-counter medicines, patients can ask their doctors for doctor prescribed narcotics or intravenous prescription medicines, if the person is nauseated or is prone to vomiting. For all those that are having much more difficulty passing the stone or stones, you will find choices available for them. Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms could be managed with prescription narcotics while other medicines are now being administered to help the stone or stones pass more rapidly.
For people that have kidney stones which will not pass on their very own, the procedure, lithotripsy is used. Lithotripsy is a process that utilizes shock waves to break up stones so that they can pass. Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms should abate after this procedure, because it breaks down the stones that are causing the pain, to help them pass much more rapidly. For much more extreme cases, you will find a couple of surgical methods that may be used to get rid of the stones and the pain.Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms can be handled in a variety of ways which will help the patient manage the pain, or eliminate the cause.
With advances in technologies, these “silent stones” could be dealt with quickly to get rid of the pain they cause for good. Kidney stone pain symptoms no longer need to be endured for long periods of time. Everything can be done quickly and efficiently to end the suffering kidney stones can cause.
Initially, kidney stones had been known as the “silent stones”, because they don’t produce symptoms in the onset of forming. However, as the stones grow in size, they can trigger pain simply because they become much more difficult to pass. When the pain shows a pattern, and all other causes are ruled out, the remedy for kidney stones can start. Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms can consist of pain in the side, groin or lower back. Once the pain is not started by the position the person is sitting in, or by the position the individual moves to, as he or she looks for relief, this pain can be a symptom of kidney stones. The level of pain from these signs and symptoms can grow and recede in intensity.
Other kidney stone pain signs and symptoms which may be present can include painful urination, traces of blood in the urine, or an urgent feeling to go when it is not necessary. For men, there can also be testicular pain and penile pain. In the event the individual has developed an infection within the urinary tract, with the kidney stone, there might be chills or fever that accompany the pain. The good news is that most people have the ability to pass a kidney stone in 24-48 hours, with a large consumption of fluid.
Also, you will find remedies for your pain, as the stone is being passed. These treatments can include over-the-counter medicines. In the event the kidney stone pain signs and symptoms aren’t handled with the over-the-counter medicines, patients can ask their doctors for doctor prescribed narcotics or intravenous prescription medicines, if the person is nauseated or is prone to vomiting. For all those that are having much more difficulty passing the stone or stones, you will find choices available for them. Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms could be managed with prescription narcotics while other medicines are now being administered to help the stone or stones pass more rapidly.
For people that have kidney stones which will not pass on their very own, the procedure, lithotripsy is used. Lithotripsy is a process that utilizes shock waves to break up stones so that they can pass. Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms should abate after this procedure, because it breaks down the stones that are causing the pain, to help them pass much more rapidly. For much more extreme cases, you will find a couple of surgical methods that may be used to get rid of the stones and the pain.Kidney stone pain signs and symptoms can be handled in a variety of ways which will help the patient manage the pain, or eliminate the cause.
With advances in technologies, these “silent stones” could be dealt with quickly to get rid of the pain they cause for good. Kidney stone pain symptoms no longer need to be endured for long periods of time. Everything can be done quickly and efficiently to end the suffering kidney stones can cause.
2011年4月7日星期四
Under this surreal 'rule by law', Ai Weiwei is guilty
When the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei insisted to reporters in Beijing this week that "China is a country ruled by law", and "other countries have no right to interfere" in the case of the detained avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei, there was a certain truth to his remarks. China is a country ruled by law. But this is quite different, as many victims of official corruption in China have discovered, from being a country in which the rule of law prevails.
The rule of law contains important principles: the law is supreme, and all have equal rights before it. The concept of rule by law was pioneered by one of China's harshest imperial regimes, the shortlived but influential Qin dynasty, 2,000 years ago. The Qin emperor saw the law as an instrument of authoritarian rule, to be defined and used as he chose, and it is this tradition that appeals to the current Chinese leadership.
Without understanding the distinction it is hard to see how China's growing body of law, with its court apparatus, judges and lawyers, really functions. Under a conventional system the supreme judicial authorities might be expected to have some legal background, but in China the head of the political and legal committee of the central committee of the Communist party, Luo Gan, is an engineer turned security supremo who is there to ensure the system serves the party. As he has put it, his role is to guard against "negative western legal concepts" like judicial independence.
The party controls the courts, appoints the judges and routinely dictates the verdicts. Even if a citizen wins a case, the court has little power to enforce the verdict without the backing of those same state officials. A Chinese litigant is often in the Kafkaesque situation of being dependent on those who committed the abuse for redress.
Nevertheless, with few other possibilities, growing numbers of Chinese citizens try to use the law to fight back against corruption. But if the citizen is expected to obey the law, the party state itself can shape and deploy it to suppress dissent and to preserve the careers of corrupt party officials. The party's discipline department will act against deviant officials when it wishes, but such matters are too important to be the concern of the legal system.
The law is, however, a handy means of detaining, harassing and disbarring defence lawyers who get in the way of the state, and for the prosecution of complaining citizens for ill-defined offences against public order, social stability, national security or, as in Ai Weiwei's case, economic crimes.
Ai's alleged economic crimes are bound to pale in comparison with those of state officials, who are reckoned to steal more than $80bn a year. A report by Beijing's Renmin University in 2005 estimated that 90% of Chinese officials spend more than they nominally earn, so if Ai's economic crimes do exist, they are unlikely to be the real problem.
Far more important are his stubborn efforts to document the names of those killed by official corruption. In this he has enjoyed more latitude than many: as the son of the celebrated revolutionary poet Ai Qing, he counts as one of China's new aristocracy. But when he set out to collect the names of the children who perished in the deathtraps of their badly-built schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he was treading on sensitive toes.
No official has been prosecuted for the corruption that produced those schools. Instead, the parents of the dead children have been harassed; a teacher who tried to help them has been jailed; and Ai Weiwei himself has suffered a brain haemorrhage from a beating last year in Sichuan. When 58 migrant workers died in a fire in a corruptly-built Shanghai tower block, Ai again set out to document the dead. This is not listed as a crime under Chinese law, but it certainly annoys those responsible.
Ai was not the first to test the limits of official tolerance. When corruption in the dairy industry led to the poisoning of a quarter of a million babies in 2008, the news was suppressed for several months so as not to spoil the Olympic mood. The firm responsible was prosecuted, but many complicit officials were not. Among the parents who remained vocally unhappy was Zhao Lianhai, who continued to campaign for compensation for his infant son, who developed kidney stones. He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail. Another father, Guo Li, got a five-year sentence.
But punishing the victims for taking legal action against corrupt officials no longer seems to be enough. In recent months a series of detentions and disappearances of active lawyers has signalled a more robust attack on the exercise of legal rights. The most notorious case is that of Gao Zhisheng, a leading human rights lawyer who was given a three-year suspended sentence in 2006 for "inciting subversion" – and who disappeared last April.
The rule of law contains important principles: the law is supreme, and all have equal rights before it. The concept of rule by law was pioneered by one of China's harshest imperial regimes, the shortlived but influential Qin dynasty, 2,000 years ago. The Qin emperor saw the law as an instrument of authoritarian rule, to be defined and used as he chose, and it is this tradition that appeals to the current Chinese leadership.
Without understanding the distinction it is hard to see how China's growing body of law, with its court apparatus, judges and lawyers, really functions. Under a conventional system the supreme judicial authorities might be expected to have some legal background, but in China the head of the political and legal committee of the central committee of the Communist party, Luo Gan, is an engineer turned security supremo who is there to ensure the system serves the party. As he has put it, his role is to guard against "negative western legal concepts" like judicial independence.
The party controls the courts, appoints the judges and routinely dictates the verdicts. Even if a citizen wins a case, the court has little power to enforce the verdict without the backing of those same state officials. A Chinese litigant is often in the Kafkaesque situation of being dependent on those who committed the abuse for redress.
Nevertheless, with few other possibilities, growing numbers of Chinese citizens try to use the law to fight back against corruption. But if the citizen is expected to obey the law, the party state itself can shape and deploy it to suppress dissent and to preserve the careers of corrupt party officials. The party's discipline department will act against deviant officials when it wishes, but such matters are too important to be the concern of the legal system.
The law is, however, a handy means of detaining, harassing and disbarring defence lawyers who get in the way of the state, and for the prosecution of complaining citizens for ill-defined offences against public order, social stability, national security or, as in Ai Weiwei's case, economic crimes.
Ai's alleged economic crimes are bound to pale in comparison with those of state officials, who are reckoned to steal more than $80bn a year. A report by Beijing's Renmin University in 2005 estimated that 90% of Chinese officials spend more than they nominally earn, so if Ai's economic crimes do exist, they are unlikely to be the real problem.
Far more important are his stubborn efforts to document the names of those killed by official corruption. In this he has enjoyed more latitude than many: as the son of the celebrated revolutionary poet Ai Qing, he counts as one of China's new aristocracy. But when he set out to collect the names of the children who perished in the deathtraps of their badly-built schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he was treading on sensitive toes.
No official has been prosecuted for the corruption that produced those schools. Instead, the parents of the dead children have been harassed; a teacher who tried to help them has been jailed; and Ai Weiwei himself has suffered a brain haemorrhage from a beating last year in Sichuan. When 58 migrant workers died in a fire in a corruptly-built Shanghai tower block, Ai again set out to document the dead. This is not listed as a crime under Chinese law, but it certainly annoys those responsible.
Ai was not the first to test the limits of official tolerance. When corruption in the dairy industry led to the poisoning of a quarter of a million babies in 2008, the news was suppressed for several months so as not to spoil the Olympic mood. The firm responsible was prosecuted, but many complicit officials were not. Among the parents who remained vocally unhappy was Zhao Lianhai, who continued to campaign for compensation for his infant son, who developed kidney stones. He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail. Another father, Guo Li, got a five-year sentence.
But punishing the victims for taking legal action against corrupt officials no longer seems to be enough. In recent months a series of detentions and disappearances of active lawyers has signalled a more robust attack on the exercise of legal rights. The most notorious case is that of Gao Zhisheng, a leading human rights lawyer who was given a three-year suspended sentence in 2006 for "inciting subversion" – and who disappeared last April.
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