Chinese test-tube baby born.

Chinese test-tube baby born

Mainland China's first test-tube baby was born last March to a 39-year-old rural schoolteacher, according to a report in the recently released MARCH CHINESE MEDICAL JOURNAL.

Research into in vitro fertilization began in 1984 at the Third Hospital of the Beijing Medical University, where the baby was born. "Different opinions on whether a country with a population of 1 billion needed to do research into test-tube births kept China from the work until six years after the world's first test-tube baby was born," the report says.

Also from the journal:

* Traditional Chinese medicine is "big business," with almost a quarter of a million households and 6,000 farms growing medicinal plants. China's 570 pharmaceutical plants produce more than 4,000 traditional Chinese medicines.

* Cancer experts favor strict measures, such as yearly increases in the price of cigarettes, to curb smoking. In Shanghai, where smoking "has been entrenched" longer than elsewhere, two-thirds of lung cancer victims are smokers. In the United States, the American Cancer Society estimates that 83 percent of lung cancer deaths in 1988 will be due to cigarettes. China produced 2 million metric tons of tobacco in 1987, compared with U.S. production of 558,000 metric tons, according to the Tobacco Institute in Washington, D.C.