Letters:

As roughly 1,000 students each year are admitted to medical schools in Taiwan and 75 percent of those are male, then 40 percent of students were in fact disqualified for service because of one medical problem or another. This is disturbing, and only a naive person would believe all the excuses were legally justifiable.

Dr Wang Wei-tien's (王維典) comment that medical students would be so foolish as to run the risk of permanently damaging their bodies just to evade the two-year military service could be construed as being either ignorant or biased. In fact, one commonly used strategy to escape service without permanently jeopardizing the body is to take medicine in a carefully calculated fashion in order to temporarily put on weight to such an extent that the person will not meet the enlistment criteria.

The doctors interviewed by Lin actually conceded that it was difficult to tell through examination if those being examined had taken medication before the check-up, probably because there were no routine blood or urine tests carried out to screen for drug abuse. Athletes who try to boost their muscle power before competitions frequently take steroids. However, their misconduct is almost always caught as a result of strict screening procedures. Therefore, to ensure fairness in the conscription system, a thorough follow-up investigation to catch those who cheated in the initial check-up should be done.

I wholeheartedly concur with Bo Tedards' disapproval of the disgraceful mentality of medical students who try to look for any legal loophole to escape service ("Letters," May 4, page 12). The officials in charge of conscription should immediately implement an expanded version of alternative service, including medical service as suggested by Tedards, as a way of solving this problem. Moral persuasion to youngsters that serving in the army is a duty and great honor is important but is also a lousy cliche that will not yield immediate results.

Guo Bih-fang

Kaohsiung