Brain surgery is not resuming in Chinese hospitals as a clinical treatment to cure drug addicts, said Health Ministry's spokesman Mao Qun'an Friday.

The ministry will not resume the surgery until a comprehensive and scientific evaluation is given to the safety and effectiveness of the practice and a technical standard is set up, the spokesman said.

According to Mao, brain surgery to curb drug cravings is a special medical practice. Those hospitals and doctors who perform the operation, as well as the equipment, environment and post-surgery observation, must be qualified and standardized.

However, as the qualification and standard has not been formulated yet, the surgery is not allowed to be used as a mass clinical treatment, he said.

"It can only be done for experimental studies at the moment," noted Mao.

Meanwhile, Qi Guoming, chief of the ministry's science and education department, said before the ministry carries out a scheme and regulation for the clinical studies of brain surgery, any medical unit cannot perform the surgery in the name of clinical study or service.

Brain surgery was suspended on Nov. 2 last year by the ministry because of disputes over its unidentified side effects among medical experts. Evaluation and argument of the operation have been lasting ever since.

According to Qi, last month, the ministry held a special meeting on this topic in Shaanxi Province, on which vice minister Jiang Zuojun said in a message that he hoped the relation and division of clinical study and clinical implementation of the brain surgery can be worked out, and a comprehensive review, evaluation and research can be made for the future of the practice.

At that meeting, experts of mental, ethical as well as neural fields reached following consensus: that the brain surgery is still in the phase of clinical studies and cannot be used in clinical service; that the current materials show the short-term effects of the brain surgery are comparatively good, but long-term effects are still unclear, which need further scientific studies; that the studies must be done in those hospitals that have a relatively good capability; that the ministry is going to set up a supervising team to verify materials and formulate a qualification standard.

The experts also agreed to work out strict plans and regulations for the clinical studies of the brain surgery, and clarify ethical principles that are involved in the practice. A stricter criterion of selecting the patients and observing side-effects were also urged.

According to sources, the ministry has got experts and academic organizations ready for making plans and regulations for the clinical studies of the brain surgery.

Brain surgery to cure drug addiction was banned in Russia in 2002 after a patient claimed he had suffered headaches as a result f the operation, which also failed to cure him of his addiction, according to a report by AFP.

By Nov. 2 when the operation was suspended, about 500 patients had received the surgery throughout China. Most of them reported positive results, but some of them appeared abnormal symptoms, like the loss of sex drive.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2005)