Wang's hormone use 'partly to blame for cancer'

Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum's long-term use of the female hormone oestrogen in an effort to have a child probably helped cause the cancer that killed her, the late billionaire's sister, who is a doctor, said yesterday.

Molly Gong Chung-sum said medical records in 2004 showed her sister, then 66, had taken oestrogen treatments for 15 years. Dr Gong told the Court of First Instance, hearing the probate battle over Wang's fortune, that those treatments - which she described as 'stupid' - began in about 1989.

This was about a year before Wang's late husband, Teddy Wang Teh-huei, was kidnapped and several years before she met fung shui master Tony Chan Chun-chuen, one of the claimants to her estate, who says he was her lover. Wang planned a trip to Italy to see if she could take part in human cloning experiments, Dr Gong said. She was unsure if the attempt was successful, she said.

Doctors discovered tumours in Wang's enlarged uterus in 2004 and advised her to stop taking oestrogen, Dr Gong said. She estimated that her sister's oestrogen use was 80 per cent responsible for the cancer.

Dr Gong, testifying for Chinachem Charitable Foundation, said she suspected that Mr Chan, as a fung shui master with knowledge of medicine, had exercised great influence over Wang and encouraged her to have the treatments. She said she suspected her sister had been told she was destined to have a child and would have a long life. 'Someone might have also told [Wang] that she looked younger than her age and that she was still like a little girl in her life cycle because she would live a very long life,' she said. Dr Gong said Wang had trusted Mr Chan very much. But she refused to accept there was true love between them, even after viewing videos and photographs and listening to audio tapes that Mr Chan had provided to prove their intimate relationship.

'According to Nina, there were only two kinds of love,' Dr Gong said. 'Firstly, it was the love of 'one life, one love' which Nina had for Teddy ... secondly it was about sacrifice.' She said the relationship was mainly monetary, noting her sister had paid Mr Chan a large sum of money.

As another sister had said earlier, she likened Mr Chan to 'Little Li' - the favourite eunuch of Qing dynasty dowager empress Cixi.