Insight - False hope? China's military hospitals offer illegal experimental cures

The gate of the Second Hospital of Beijing Armed Police Corps is seen in Beijing, China, May 4, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - For student Wei Zexi, the lure of a miracle cure was hard to resist: he was dying from a rare cancer and a well-known Beijing hospital was offering treatment with an 80 percent chance of success and no side effects. It was, the hospital said, the ideal choice.

There was a problem: The military-run hospital did not have regulatory approval to offer the immunotherapy course it sold to Wei at a steep fee. The treatment itself - while promising - is widely considered by global cancer specialists to be at the experimental stage.