"Free physical examinations" advertised by fly-by-night outfits selling "health and beauty products" are just money-making ploys with no legitimate medical backing, reports Beijing Evening News. And one man lost all his hair after using such a product.

A recent notice posted at a residential complex in Xiaohuangzhuang touted complimentary physical examinations for the elderly in conjunction with lectures on health to be delivered by "veteran medical experts" at a hotel at Hepingli.

Some 200 elderly men and women gathered at the hotel, where five people dressed like doctors took turns examining them.

Almost all of them were told they had high cholesterol and got talked into buying "medicine" recommended by the doctors. A woman surnamed Hu said she paid 2,000 yuan (US$240).

A man, also surnamed Hu, had a similarly unsettling experience when a salesman working out of a park poured a bottle of hair dye on his head last Saturday.

Later on the man's scalp began to ache and swell.

Eventually he had have all of his hair shaved off to be examined in hospital.

Close