Growth Hormone part 4
I wrote a lot about the Chinese Growth Hormone which is very popular among bodybuilders, athletes, anti-aging adepts etc.
Underneath this article you can find the links to the articles where I explain, how the different Chinese companies are to be recognized. Jintropin was extremely popular some time ago and the boxes on the left where being sold in mass. When a product brings such high sales and profits, there are always people that counterfeit this product or try to sell fakes. The box on the left is a counterfeit (marked with an F), the box on the right is a real Jintropin box.. A counterfeit is a product that looks like the real product and also contains the same active ingredient. In this case somatropin or rhGrowth Hormone. A fake is mostly a product that looks like the original product but has no active ingredient or another active ingredient. The counterfeited products are mostly under dosed as you will notice later in this article.
As you can read in my previous articles the price of recombinant human growth hormone was very high due to the limited amount of manufacturers that kept the prices high to increase their profit. Pharmaceutical companies don’t care less about the consequences of their artificial high prices. In those days the GH was mostly meant for real patients. Newspapers reported about immoral bodybuilders using the scares growth hormone for body enhancement. They didn’t and don’t mention the immoral practices of big pharma. Just remember HIV.
Luckily manufacturer’s in China and India made their own generic versions and also kept the prices low, just like they broke Pfizer that asked extremely high prices for their sildenafil (Viagra) at the expense of desperate men. Now available to everyone for pennies.
The USA tries to stop this cheap source of drugs, by telling lies in the media about the quality. And tries to stop this cheap supply by their government, that puts pressure on all kinds of countries to go back to situation where a few big pharmaceutical companies controlled the supply and prices. USA based companies of course. These companies earn billions and pay taxes, thus the US government surely wants to help them. Their War on Drugs is therefore for the biggest part financial based.
The picture shows a counterfeited vial next to a real lable. the difference is obvious, the cap is reddish brown, the real cap is brown.
China did not begin competing in the Olympics until 1952, and the 2008 Summer Games would be the first time China would host an Olympic event. The relationship between the United States and China had improved dramatically over the past decade, and imports from China had almost tripled between 2000 and 2007.
Not even a year before the Beijing Olympics were scheduled to start, Operation Raw Deal was fresh in the news. This involved some arrests based around illegal goods being imported into the U.S. - those goods being steroid raw materials, hGH, and IGF-1. Many exporters of steroids and hGH from countries where the law is not so tough on these drugs feel they are immune to US DEA and FDA laws. Operation Raw Deal purported to change that mindset.
A decade ago it would probably be impossible for U.S. DEA to enter China and work with local law enforcement in bringing down a huge steroid and hGH exporting business. But in 2007, this is exactly what U.S. FDA-OCI and DEA agents did. Factories were raided, people were arrested, and the export of steroid powders and hGH came to a halt. With the huge increase in trade with the US and the Beijing Olympics on the horizon, the Chinese government needed to show the world that the IOC chose the right city to host the Olympics.
At the time of the raids in China, this country was the largest producer of steroid raw material and hGH. This obviously caused a shortage, and prices shot through the roof, very similar to the after effect of Operation Gear Grinder where numerous steroid labs in Mexico were raided and shut down. The supply was temporarily limited but the demand did not budge.
GeneScience, operated by Lei Jin in China, was thought to be responsible for 90 percent of the growth hormone produced illegally outside the US, which consisted of the name brand Jinitropin among many other generics that were shipped without label which would be relabeled within the US. Jin was indicted in Rhode Island, but never showed up for a single court date. Instead, Lei Jin would plead guilty from China in U.S. District Court in Providence on a misdemeanor charge for his involvement in importing growth hormone into the US District Court.
He received probation after agreeing to to pay $3 million toward a “Clean Competition Fund” that would support drug-free sports, and $7.2 million in criminal forfeitures. The US government had previously seized $2.7 million from New York bank accounts linked to the company’s growth hormone business. Like I said the only thing that counts is the holy US dollar
Did that mean Chinese growth Hormone was gone completely of course not. Hygetropin filled the shoes of Jintropin. And what happened to Jintropin also happened to Hygetropin. Hygetropin is made by two different companies in two different styles. I explained that in part 3 (link underneath this article), thus we won’t go into that to deep.
The version of Zhongshan Hygene Biopharm became very popular lately and on the left you see a counterfeit box compared to a real one. The safety seal on the real box is on the side of the box, the counterfeited box bears it on the front. Something you will see again later in the article. Of course there are much more differences but the most important is that when you scratch the foil from the anti-counterfeit sticker and type the verification code into the box of the website, it will show that it is a counterfeit.
Zhongshan Hygene Biopharm has a website hygetropin.com.cn and Dr. Lin uses the website hygetropin.cn , these two websites sell pure and well dosed rhGH (recombinant human growth hormone), as we have analyzed many times. Because both companies use the same brandname and because the boxes look almost similar except for the website and the anti-counterfeit sticker. This situation causes a lot of discussion on the boards. Also because there are many counterfeits. As Mike told me he knows at least seven (!!) counterfeits of their product.
All this confusion also has a sunny side. Because the two companies are somewhat competing against each other, they both overdose. Zhongshan Hygene adds an extra 30% to its products. And as the purity analyses show the products are also very clean.
The Hygetropin from Dr. Lin has a 100 iu (10 vials of 10 iu) yellowtop and a 200 iu box (25 vials of 8 iu) greentop.
As I wrote above almost all interesting products are being counterfeited. Above you can see on the left 3 anti-counterfeit-stickers from 315net. In the real anti-counterfeiting sticker (real) the fibers are embedded (you can use a needle to pick some fibers out), while the counterfeit label (fake) normally would not have the fibers and instead they usually have printed marks where the fibers should be embedded. The newer counterfeit (bad fake) has no fibers embedded nor printed. Normally the anti-counterfeit stickers are glued half on the lid and half on the box. To ensure you have to break the seal. On the box in the picture you can see that the sticker is glued on the front of the box..bizarre. On the analysis rep[ort you can see that this product contains 4 iu/vial instead of the labeled 10 iu. The product shows no impurities and we can be sure that it is made by a good manufacturer who knows what he is doing. How can I be so sure of that? I’ll explain later.
Members who follow us, know that we ran a full analysis on several Chinese products from the black market. The results are posted on the left, just like a HPLC graphic of the Zhongshan Hygetropin.
Zhongshan informed me that they planned some changes in 2014:
- first of all we are updating our website right now and the new website will be online in January 2014, if all goes as scheduled
- we are changing all the serial numbers right now on the kits, each distributor will have his own serial numbers so the manufacturer can control the price and can find out easy if a distributor sell the Hygetropin to cheap. All distributors have a price guide line which they need to meet, otherwise the distributors contract will be cancelled.
- there will be a new specification which will be 80iu kits (10vials x 8iu) additional to the 100iu kits (10vials x 10iu) and 200iu kits (25vials x 8iu). the new 80iu kits should be ready in new year
- there has been also a price increase as the raw material price has gone up and the exchange rate changed from 6.3RMB/1USD to 6.7RMB/1USD. But the manufacturer will never cut the quality of Hygetropin , thus we decided to keep the quality high and increase the price slightly
- yes the Hyge is going be overdosed by 30% to assure full potency of at least 10iu per vial once the Hyge reach customers hand
During my research I normally act like a big client and I always try to get as much information as possible and when possible samples. A real eyeopener this time was, that when I ordered blue top vials I was able to buy all kinds of quality/purity and I also learned that they are standard available in 4 – 6 - 8 and 10 iu. This explains a lot. Mostly the under dosed and bad quality of some products was blamed on the (Chinese) manufacturer or middleman. But don’t be fooled, some suppliers in Europe and the States just want to make a quick buck.
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As wrote a billion times, most end-users just want cheap gear. But they want first class gear also. Believe me ... if it looks too good to be true, it mostly is..
...buyer beware...
To show you that warnings and analyses don’t always help to get rid of a bad counterfeit, I give you this example and up until today it sold in diverse webshops.
In 2009 Nuremberg customs investigators seized in a shipment from China 800 counterfeit drug ampoules (so-called dual-chamber cartridges) with the alleged drug "Somatropin 15 IU” (5 mg). The Institute of Forensic Medicine, from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg analysed these products and the turned out to be dangerous counterfeits.
instead of the expected growth hormone actually "somatropin," of which not the slightest traces could be found. the counterfeited Somatropin contained among other substances, in particular the drug cortisone.
Cortisone often leads to muscle atrophy as a side effect (muscle) and also results in osteoporosis and weight gain with truncal obesity. It is precisely these possible hazardous effects of the counterfeit rhGH "SOMATROPE" - especially since its frequently used in the bodybuilding scene – that is not exactly desirable.
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//juicedmuscle.com/jmblog/content/growth-hormone-part-1
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