Hu Mouyan was known among cat owners in Shanghai as the “goddess of medicine” after she developed and sold a treatment for feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a deadly viral disease.
But this purveyor of cat drugs is not so revered in the eyes of the Chinese authorities. She was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 40 million yuan (S$7.5 million) after a Chinese court found her guilty of producing and selling counterfeit drugs for cats.
When Hu’s cat developed FIP in 2017, a disease caused by a feline coronavirus, the chemistry graduate sprung into action, spending over 200,000 yuan to source chemical compounds from overseas. She eventually developed a treatment for the disease, which media reports said was effective.
Shanghai-based media outlet Sixth Tone reported last Thursday that Hu had modified the molecular formula of a compound known to cure FIP and used it as an additive to another veterinary drug approved for production and sale in China. While the modified compound was not approved as a veterinary drug, it was shown to be effective in treating FIP, reported Sixth Tone.
Even though the drug was not approved, Hu sold it to other pet owners. She and her team also developed other drugs to treat other feline diseases, which earned her the “goddess of medicine” nickname.
Sixth Tone reported that her supporters said “as a cat lover, she could not bear to wait to have the novel drug approved, a process that takes up to four years”.
But the authorities found that Hu, who was sentenced on June 30, was selling bottles of her FIP drug for more than 1,000 yuan each, or 50 times what it cost to produce the drug, raking in over 80 million yuan in sales.
She and her accomplices also impersonated employees of American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences – the firm that produces the compound she modified – in order to report to the police other companies producing similar unauthorised drugs.
According to court documents, Hu had told her accomplices that her competitors had to be “destroyed” as they were selling the same drugs at nearly half their price. Several of her competitors ended up being sentenced because of her whistleblowing.
Hu’s brother was one of her accomplices and was sentenced to eight years in jail for his role in her operations.
