Cancer patient faces charges for selling drug that's now legal

The detention of a liver cancer patient who made a profit selling a cancer drug before it was approved on the Chinese mainland has sparked heated public debate.

Zhai Yiping, a project manager at a Shanghai construction company, was detained by police on July 25 on suspicion of selling "fake drugs" after he imported Opdivo and sold it to other patients with a 5 percent markup, China National Radio reported.

Opdivo, which works with the immune system to halt the growth and spread of cancer cells, was developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb, a pharmaceutical company in the United States.