'Ant-idotes' make millions for China

Fri, 07 Apr 1995

BEIJING (AFP): China's pharmaceutical industry is making one billion yuan (US$120 million) a year from the common ant, which has proved startlingly efficacious in treating maladies from arthritis to impotence, Xinhua said yesterday.

The ant's miraculous powers came to light recently following the discovery by Prof. Wu Zhicheng -- known as "King Ant" for his studies into the insect -- that ant's bodies contain more than 50 kinds of nutritious substances.

According to Wu, ant medicines developed by his Ants Therapy Research Center in Nanjing have allowed 5,000 paralyzed people to stand again, and cured some 280,000 hepatitis-B sufferers.

The medicines have also proved effective in treating infertility and sexual impotence in men, he added.

In eastern Shandong province, a company has recently started to mass produce an ant medicine mixed with "dates, fleece-flower root and wolfberry root" that is capable of treating 93 percent of various kinds of arthritic problems, the news agency said.

Some doctors claim that the practice of "ant therapy" is 3,000 years old in China.

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