\u201cAny breakthroughs on the \u2018extraordinary medicine\u2019 yet? Not even in the U.S.? How about vaccines? When can we start using it?\u201d My informant was disappointed when I told him there was no \u201cextraordinary medicine\u201d for COVID-19 yet, nor would any vaccine be ready for the public anytime soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Chinese, \u201cextraordinary medicine,\u201d\u7279\u6548\u836f (te xiao yao<\/em>), refers to medicine that has extraordinary effects on a specific disease. Since January 2020, \u201cextraordinary medicine\u201d has become a staple in the linguistic repertoire of everyday life in China. What my informant and others express through their persistent (re)quest for \u201cextraordinary medicines\u201d is a dissatisfaction with the currently available treatment protocols. They are considered too slow, gradual, imperfect, and, indeed, ordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As early as the end of January, soon after the national lockdown was announced, \u201cextraordinary medicine\u201d had already caught people\u2019s attention in China. Dr. Wang Guangfa, a member of the COVID-19 expert team in China, publicly announced that Kaletra, an antiretroviral medicine for HIV\/AIDS, cured his COVID-19-induced fever overnight. He was soon discharged after being tested negative twice for SARS-CoV-2 (Ni 2020). The purported effectiveness of Kaletra was also backed up by the Shanghai CDC\u2019s Dr. Lu Hongzhou, who also claimed that his team had used Kaletra to effectively treat COVID-19 (Xinlang Tech 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gay men in China\u2014my main informants\u2014were among the first to act on this announcement, due to their relative familiarity with antiretroviral medication. In fact, by the time claims about Kaletra caught other people\u2019s attention, many gay men in China had already been stocking up on this prescription drug and other medicines for HIV\/AIDS through online vendors or from drugstores in Thailand or India. Some even started taking them in an attempt to prevent contracting SARS-CoV-2. It was soon discovered, however, that not only did Kaletra have no detectable effects in treating COVID-19, it might in fact slow down recovery and lead to side effects (Ni 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this light, it appears uncanny that a 2011 movie called Contagion<\/a><\/em> makes a rather accurate prediction about a situation like that of COVID-19 (Karlamangla 2020). In the movie, the British actor Jude Law plays the role of a blogger who partners with big pharma and makes a false claim on social media that forsythia is the cure for a deadly infectious disease called MEV-1. Soon afterwards, people start waiting in long lines in drug stores to purchase forsythia and even resort to burglary and violence to obtain this supposedly life-saving medicine. Many die, both from cross-infection in crowded drug stores and from physical violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is more uncanny is how this movie plot became reality on the other side of the Pacific Ocean in China. On January 31, 2020, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica made a joint statement that a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) called Shuang Huang Lian (\u53cc\u9ec4\u8fde) could effectively hinder SARS-CoV-2. Shuang Huang Lian contains three main plant-based ingredients: honeysuckle, Chinese skullcap, and forsythia<\/em>. Immediately, this statement went viral on the internet and across social media platforms, and was reposted even by governmental outlets such as People\u2019s Daily<\/em>. Although this statement was released in the evening, people rushed to drug stores and waited in line on the cold winter nights. Within a matter of a couple hours, this TCM was out of stock in physical and online stores. The urge for the extraordinary medicine was so intense that even medicines for livestock containing the same ingredients were quickly sold out for human consumption (Li et al. 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stockpiling of medicines assumed to have extraordinary effects in preventing the disease led to human costs for those actually sick with conditions now deemed unimportant compared to COVID-19, such as kidney failure, HIV\/AIDS, cancer, or psychiatric diseases. For some people, these medicines are ordinary yet life-saving drugs they need on a daily basis for their conditions (Torres 2020). When they became extraordinary in the COVID-19 response, these medicines quickly went out-of-stock and their prices skyrocketed. The promise of extraordinariness\u2014supposedly miraculous life-saving effects\u2014ended up threatening the life and well-being of many. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a fervent anticipation and search for \u201cextraordinary medicine\u201d also reveals a deeply-rooted and disproportionate emphasis on treatment and cure over prevention and \u201cpreparedness\u201d in global health (Lakoff 2017). As one of my informants, a director at a leading NGO for gay men and male sex workers in China commented, \u201cWhy do people always think that it\u2019s so easy to produce \u2018extraordinary medicines\u2019? HIV\/AIDS has been around for about thirty years now, and there\u2019s still no \u2018extraordinary medicine.\u2019 People always think that our services of testing, researching, and monitoring are a complete waste of money. It\u2019s just like the Chinese saying, \u2018one who doesn\u2019t think ahead will have to worry soon\u2019[1]<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This director\u2019s view was not shared by all amidst the outbreak. Rather, the hope of finding extraordinary medicine was persistent and fervent. In China, there are currently over 270 registered clinical trials for different treatments and medicines for COVID-19. Due to the intense competition for participants, many such trials have failed to reach a satisfactory sample size for their studies (MIT Technology Review 2020). Among them is a medicine called Remdesivir, produced by the U.S.-based pharmaceutical Gilead. Originally produced for general antiviral purposes and tested for various infectious diseases such as SARS, MERS, and Ebola, Remdesivir was used to treat the first COVID-19 patient in the U.S. The patient\u2019s condition improved overnight (Joseph, 2020). Despite the rocky trajectory this medicine has had in clinical trials in the past, and although it is currently still unapproved by the FDA, this extraordinary result prompted the Wuhan Institute for Virology to apply for a patency for the use of Remdesivir on COVID-19 and to launch its own clinical trial (Lv 2020). Soon, Remdesivir saturated all sorts of media outlets\u2014so much so that it was nicknamed in China as \u201cPeople\u2019s Hope\u201d (\u4eba\u6c11\u7684\u5e0c\u671b, ren min de xi wang<\/em>) because of their similar pronunciations. Ironically, People\u2019s Hope was drowned by people\u2019s hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, the hope persists. Obsession with and faith in the extraordinary has started to prompt a critical reflection on and even challenge to science and ethics. As one of my acquaintances insists, \u201cNot everything can be explained by science! Even if a random person on the street claims that they have a cure, however unscientific it sounds, we have to give it a try! Nothing works so far! That\u2019s a matter of saving human life. It\u2019s the ethical thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But my informant wasn\u2019t precisely right. Not only do existing public health protocols work, up to the point this article was written, over 309 thousand patients have already recovered (Worldometer, 2020). And the number of those recovering will continue to grow. Despite this success, gradual, relatively slow, and \u201cmundane\u201d successful cases seem only to serve as the backdrop against which people judge \u201cmiracles\u201d that are not always explained by science (Zhan 2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In China and elsewhere, many people, just like my informant, continue to anticipate fast-tracked procedures which either shorten or entirely evade clinical trials in order to find and produce \u201cextraordinary medicines\u201d and vaccines. Moving from one candidate to another, the search for extraordinary medicine continues. There is nothing wrong with seeking an effective treatment for a rapidly spreading infectious disease, but one must reckon with the human and social costs\u2014too easily brushed aside as acceptable collateral damage, or even justifiable sacrifices for the greater good\u2014that such a fervent obsession with the extraordinary entails. That is, what happens when an obsession with extraordinary medicine for one disease renders other forms of social suffering mundane and ordinary?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yifeng Troy Cai<\/strong> is a PhD candidate in anthropology and MPH candidate at Brown University, whose research interests include medical anthropology, queer studies, STS, and exchange theory. Cai\u2019s research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Karlamangla, S. (2020, March 11). How the makers of \u201ccontagion\u201d saw an outbreak like coronavirus coming. Los Angeles Times<\/em>. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-03-11\/coronavirus-contagion-outbreak-accuracy-movie<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lakoff, A. (2017). Unprepared: Global health in a time of emergency<\/em>. Berkeley: University of California Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lv, J. (2020, February 5). Why the Wuhan Institute for Virology can apply for patency for Gilead\u2019s Remdesivir<\/em> (\u6b66\u6c49\u75c5\u6bd2\u6240\u4e3a\u4f55\u80fd\u62a2\u6ce8\u7533\u62a5\u745e\u5fb7\u897f\u97e6\u7684\u4e13\u5229). Wangyi Tech. Retrieved from http:\/\/tech.163.com\/20\/0205\/12\/F4KF888800097U81.html.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MIT Technology Review. (2020, February 28). Remdesivir doesn\u2019t has enough samples, \u201cpeople\u2019s hope\u201d drowned in 271 research projtects<\/em> (\u745e\u5fb7\u897f\u97e6\u906d\u9047\u60a3\u8005\u6837\u672c\u4e0d\u8db3, \u201c\u4eba\u6c11\u7684\u5e0c\u671b\u201d\u6df9\u6ca1\u5728271\u9879\u7814\u7a76\u4e2d) Retrieved from http:\/\/www.mittrchina.com\/preview\/news\/4857.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Torres, S. (2020, March 25). Stop hoarding hydroxychloroquine. Many Americans, including me, need it. Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n