Hanoi - Vietnam has fined four local newspapers and news websites between 750 and 937 dollars for publishing articles on a study purporting to link grapefruit consumption with breast cancer, an official said Monday. The Ministry of Information and Communication issued a decision ordering Thanh Nien and Popular Science newspapers and Dan Tri and Thoibaoviet.com websites to pay the cash fines, according to Nguyen Thanh Hai, chief investigator of the ministry.
The state-controlled newspapers and websites ran articles in July quoting a US university study that said eating grapefruits could raise the risk of breast cancer among post-menopausal women by up to 30 per cent.
The Vietnamese government objected to the articles, saying it hurt local growers of pomelo - a kind of grapefruit - when wary readers stopped buying the fruit.
"Their news articles have caused total damage cost of up to 60 billion dong (3.7 million dollars) to grapefruit growers in Vietnam," Hai said. "The information pulled the price of a grapefruit from 8,000-9,000 dong down to 2,000-3,000 dong."
Hai said the study - conducted of 50,000 post-menopausal women by researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Hawaii - did not prove any conclusive link for grapefruits grown in Vietnam and so the articles should not have been published.
Communist-run Vietnam has more than 700 newspapers and broadcast stations as well as dozens of websites, all subject to strict state control.
