Student tries cancer treatment found on Baidu search, dies

Before his death, the student accuses Baidu of promoting false medical information

The death of a student following experimental cancer treatment he found through China's biggest search engine, Baidu, has exposed the faultlines in the company's business model, which relies heavily on income from the country's lightly regulated health sector.

Before his death, student Wei Zexi, 21, criticised the military-run hospital that provided the failed treatment for misleading claims about its effectiveness and accused Baidu, which controls 80 per cent of the Chinese search market, of promoting false medical information.

This week the health ministry began an investigation into the hospital, while the internet regulator began an investigation into Baidu.

The regulators have not said what, if any, offences or regulations might have been broken and did not respond to requests for comment.

Analysts at Daiwa said regulators could be checking for compliance with China's Advertisements Law, which says medical sector advertising should not contain assertions about effectiveness.

Baidu said it was also conducting an investigation and would fully cooperate with the regulator.

It is not clear that conventional treatment - typically surgery to remove the tumour - would have cured the rare synovial sarcoma that Wei suffered from.

Reuters has not been able to reach the hospital for comment.

Baidu has come in for fierce online criticism for how it handles adverts within its search results, especially from an industry as sensitive as healthcare, which analysts at Nomura and Daiwa say provides 20 to 30 per cent of its search revenues.

In 2015 search revenues were 55.7 billion yuan ($8.6 billion), or 84 per cent of Baidu's total sales.