Gao Yaojie uncovered a scandal that shocked and shamed China

The impoverished farmers of Henan province, in the Yellow river valley of northern China, had no name for the illness that began to strike them down in the 1990s. They called it “the strange disease”. It made them weary and nauseous, spread a rash on their bodies and made sores grow in their mouths. And it made people vanish. Muscles and strength wasted away, so that men could no longer work the flat brown fields. Families dwindled and disappeared. Owners of new-built houses never moved in, leaving them empty. Some people, realising they were sick, simply ran away. Instead of crops, the fields sprouted mud-mound graves.Local doctors were as puzzled as the victims. So in 1996 they called in Gao Yaojie to help. She was nearly 70 then, and technically she had retired. But her fund of medical knowledge, especially in obstetrics and female cancers, was formidable. She had always had a pretty good head on her shoulders. In 1950 she had been one of the first women to enter the Henan Medical School, walking with a limp which she never lost, because for six years as a child her feet had been bound to fit her for a daintier, idler life. Not for her, thank you.