As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, about half of the world’s supply of heparin originates in China. Heparin is the main ingredient in a type of blood thinning medication that is sold by Baxter International. In the U.S., it has recently been associated with hundreds of adverse reactions and a few deaths, though the exact causes remain unclear. Raw heparin originates from pig intestine, and the harvesting starts in small Chinese factories using relatively coarse methods, such as wringing the intestines by hand and boiling in concrete vats. Some of the same factories even make sausage casings from the pig intestines. The methods by which heparin is harvested are raising questions over whether heparin makers should be able to track their product back to individual pigs. There is, of course, a lengthy purification process between the time heparin leaves a pig’s intestine and it reaches your blood. Drug companies argue that this process is enough to remove impurities. However, others argue that the raw materials should be traceable in order to quickly track any problems that arise.

What we are ultimately facing is a larger issue of economics and how much people are willing to pay for their drugs and the purity. Many products, from heparin to ginger root, originate through accumulation of small lots contributed from essentially untraceable Chinese sources. Are we as American consumers willing to pay the price for accountability? And if so, it is not clear how to go about it in the case of heparin. DNA fingerprinting of pigs seems to be a solution, but a very expensive one at that.