Toxic toys? Tainted toothpaste? Contaminated Heparin? Some drugmakers may not be deterred. Take Pfizer- maybe. During its briefing yesterday for Wall Streeters, the drugmaker noted how important Asia is to its future growth. As part of its plan, Pfizer hopes to take “greater advantage of global manufacturing and R&D” there. Specifically, Pfizer “plans to expand operations in China from the 110 cities it now serves to more than 650 cities.”

So does that mean Pfizer will manufacture in China - and then sell those drugs in the US? “They didn’t say it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening,” Les Funtleyder, an analyst at Miller TabakFuntleyder, tells the Associated Press. “They said they would use regional plants to supply the region to give them a cost advantage.”

We sort some clarification. A Pfizer spokesman wrote us to say: “Pfizer has manufacturing plants in Dalian, Suzhou and Wuxi. None of these facilities supply Human Health products to the United States.” Notice the response is in the present tense.

Pfizer has been eyeing the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients in China for a few years, actually, and struck a deal with two companies, including Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group, a state-owned Chinese drugmaker that exports to dozens of countries, including the US, which is at the center of a nationwide scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last year by contaminated leukemia drugs.

We asked about this last month and the same Pfizer spokesman wrote this: “In 2006, Pfizer entered into an agreement with Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group in China to evaluate SPG’s capabilities as an ingredient supplier. To date, SPG has not met the standards required by Pfizer for suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Because SPG has not met these requirements, Pfizer has not sourced any API for human use in the United States from any SPG facility, nor does it have the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration to do so.”

But what about the future? After the Pfizer spokesman yesterday declined to say whether Pfizer plans to make drugs in China for sale in the US, we wrote again, but there was no reply. If the answer is no, well, the spokesman could have written as much. The failure to do so only creates a vacuum to be filled by speculation. Given that API manufacturing in China is a low-cost endeavor, though, Pfizer has only itself to blame for any speculation.