He is Li Dejun, president of the Shandong Provincial Academy of Pesticide Sciences, and his most proud work in his life is overcoming the technical difficulties of paraquat.
When tens of thousands of tonnes of paraquat were put on the market, the situation reversed in two steps.
Li Dejun said with great heartache: "I studied herbicides, and I never considered the issue of antidotes, but I didn't expect that someone would take the initiative to drink it."
After about eight years of researching paraquat and the rest of his life, Li Dejun had to do what to do with how to keep people from drinking and help poisoned patients.
Is there really no cure for paraquat? Why did Li Dejun choose paraquat as his research direction in the first place, and what efforts did he make in the second half of his life?
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Paraquat poisoners – a long and painful death
Li Hongda's life is tragic, he lost his parents when he was young, grew up lonely and poor, and his grandparents are his only spiritual sustenance.
But when he reached the age of 20 and was in a position to repay his grandparents for their support, the successive deaths of the two elderly people caused him so much pain that he could not think of committing suicide by drinking paraquat pesticides.
In Li Hongda's mind, he drank a pesticide called diquat, but the liquid in it was paraquat.
The most important feature of paraquat is that the initial symptoms are not obvious after taking it, although Li Hongda is also very uncomfortable, and after being taken to the hospital by his uncle, he has undergone gastric lavage and infusion treatment, and his condition is relatively stable.
The real danger is in the post-stabilization phase, when the paraquat solution penetrates into the bloodstream and internal organs, mainly attacking the lungs.
During those seemingly stable phases, patients are suffering from paraquat and by the time irreversible fibrosis develops in their lungs, the outcome is already predestined.
It's an understatement process, but within two to three weeks of major changes in the human body, the patient suffers more than death.
In the hospital, Li Hongda also experienced a similar process, with symptoms such as hemoptysis, chest tightness and shortness of breath, abnormal liver and kidney function, and mild lung fibrosis, and then various complications began to appear, and various indicators also began to deteriorate.
He had severe breathing difficulties and his lungs were examined to be completely fibrotic.
In the end, Li Hongda clearly perceived the whole process of his body's deterioration, and left in pain in the desire for life and remorse for drinking pesticides.
The Li Hongda incident is a tragedy, but it is not an isolated case. Like him, a 13-year-old girl from Henan province volunteered to drink paraquat.
The little girl's stomach was all black, her lungs and kidneys were still corroded by pesticides, and her multiple organs were failing.
There are those who drink paraquat voluntarily and those who drink paraquat unintentionally.
On 6 August 2018, a 15-year-old boy in Zhuxi picked up a cup by the river to drink water, but paraquat was poisonous.
Regrettably, the teenager did not wait for a heart and lung transplant donor organ and passed away at the most energetic age.
There are still villains in the world who are malicious and trick others into drinking paraquat poison, and the person Chen hurt is still his wife and sister.
Mengmeng, an 18-year-old girl, is from Xingtai, Hebei Province. In 2021, Mengmeng was in her third year of high school, and due to the pressure of studying, she had been studying at home for about 20 days.
In order to relax Mengmeng, the married sister took her to live at home. On the day of the incident, my sister went out, and her brother-in-law Chen tricked Mengmeng into drinking two cups of diluted paraquat pesticide on the pretext of preventing a cold.
After the second cup, Meng Meng had already begun to vomit, and then she was taken to the hospital for treatment.
At the stage of Mengmeng's struggle with death, Chen did not appear, and Chen's family did not formally apologize and condole.
Even though Mengmeng was lying on the hospital bed, the facts of Chen's crime should not be covered up, he was taken away by the police for investigation and accepted the punishment he deserved.
It's a pity that Meng Meng couldn't carry it.
Paraquat was first developed and monopolized by the British, as a herbicide, its function is to control weeds, and no antidote has been considered.
So, as a highly toxic and incurable existence, why is paraquat being developed in mainland China?
The birth of the father of paraquat
Li Dejun is a native of Shandong, he graduated from Shandong University in 1983 and became the director of the institute at the age of 31.
The mainland has always been a big grain country, and it is unreliable to count on foreign imports in terms of food security, so its own agricultural development must keep up.
As the population grows, increasing food production within a limited area of arable land must be considered, and the use of pesticides is essential.
Li Dejun also said in an interview: "At that time, I was young and vigorous, so I would choose this topic that no other research group would choose." ”
In addition to contributing to the country's agricultural development, it is understandable that he is better able to do so because almost no one has covered the paraquat issue.
In fact, research on paraquat was very complex, and it took about eight years to make a sustained breakthrough.
The mainland is the second country besides Britain to master this technology.
Compared to other pesticides on the market, paraquat has irreplaceable advantages.
It is passivated when it hits soil, which means that paraquat acts on grass and does not harm the soil, let alone the rhizomes of plants.
In addition, paraquat works very quickly and is resistant to rain.
As soon as it entered the market, paraquat was immediately popular with farmers as a cure for weeding.
However, since then, paraquat has also become a poison that kills human lives, and patients who have actively or passively consumed paraquat have died in agony, with only a few exceptions surviving the after-effects.
Paraquat is incurable and is a medical problem in the world.
Li Dejun was proud of his research and grateful for the glory that paraquat had brought him, but when paraquat patients and their families asked him for an antidote, he learned that many people had died as a result of his research.
The psychological burden suddenly came up, and he couldn't accept that he was the driving force behind the loss of life, so he wanted to make changes to avoid more tragedies.
Li Dejun is not a doctor, what can he do?
State action: paraquat is only allowed to be exported
After the paraquat poisoning incident, Li Dejun immediately set about improving his work. In the first step, paraquat changes its colour to an intimidating dark green, avoiding the possibility of drinking it by mistake.
In the second step, the herbicide also adds a odorant, when the liquid is put to the mouth to smell the odor, the human body will instinctively resist, so as to reduce the probability of suicide drinking.
Finally, an emetic agent is added to it, and once it is drunk, the central nervous system of the brain will send a signal to make the body vomit and spit out the liquid to buy time for treatment.
Even so, paraquat deaths occurred from time to time, and Li Dejun felt a strong sense of guilt about what he could do to change the situation.
His actions were twofold.
On the one hand, it drags the person who commits impulsive suicide through the 13-second time cycle, because after 13 seconds, the person has no suicidal thoughts.
But how do you get past those 13 seconds?
Since the liquid is easy to drink, does making it into granules solve the problem? However, the production of particles requires the workshop to meet ultra-high hygiene standards, and the mainland has not yet achieved this technological breakthrough.
So, this path is not feasible at the moment.
On the other hand, when it comes to caring for people with paraquat poisoning, Li Dejun has taken the lead in contacting domestic companies, including Red Sun in Nanjing, Taihe in Suzhou, and a company in Shandong, Jinan and Taiwan, who have jointly funded the formation of a paraquat social care working group.
Li Dejun sincerely wants to change, and he has also done some things in a down-to-earth manner, but these aspects have not cured the symptoms.
In the end, the state struck!
Since 2020, a ban has been issued that paraquat can only be exported and not sold domestically.
The "water of death" has disappeared in the country, and it is hoped that there will be no such tragedies again.