Doctors must protect Chen
The Hippocratic Oath is a pledge, called the “Doctor’s Oath” in Chinese, that is taken by doctors and other healthcare professionals, asking them to promise, to the best of their abilities, to practice medicine ethically and honestly. It is not a formal contract, and it is up to each doctor or nurse to live up to the oath as best they can.
It is apparent from photographs in newspapers and on television news that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), currently serving a long jail sentence, is not in the best of health. Visitors from who have seen Chen have reported back to the media that he looks frail and depressed.
Whatever the legal and correctional system issues that are facing Chen — and he must face these squarely — surely there is room in a warm and humane country like Taiwan for some kind of medical pardon: based not only on humanitarian and medical reasons, but also on the Hippocratic Oath.
The oath’s content: “To keep the sick from harm and injustice,” surely applies to the situation Taiwan is facing in regard to Chen’s health. The doctors looking at the issue of medical parole for Chen should leave politics aside and only focus on the medical aspects of his case.
The Hippocratic Oath is understood by all doctors and now might be the time to jettison politics, put the political issues to one side and focus solely on the medical aspects of Chen’s condition.
If Taiwan’s doctors do this, be they members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or the Democratic Progressive Party or just independent voters that support neither party, they can better focus on what needs to be done, and done soon.
Dan Bloom
Chiayi
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
Taiwan should reject two flawed answers to the Eswatini controversy: that diplomatic allies no longer matter, or that they must be preserved at any cost. The sustainable answer is to maintain formal diplomatic relations while redesigning development relationships around transparency, local ownership and democratic accountability. President William Lai’s (賴清德) canceled trip to Eswatini has elicited two predictable reactions in Taiwan. One camp has argued that the episode proves Taiwan must double down on support for every remaining diplomatic ally, because Beijing is tightening the screws, and formal recognition is too scarce to risk. The other says the opposite: If maintaining
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), during an interview for the podcast Lanshuan Time (蘭萱時間) released on Monday, said that a US professor had said that she deserved to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize following her meeting earlier this month with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Cheng’s “journey of peace” has garnered attention from overseas and from within Taiwan. The latest My Formosa poll, conducted last week after the Cheng-Xi meeting, shows that Cheng’s approval rating is 31.5 percent, up 7.6 percentage points compared with the month before. The same poll showed that 44.5 percent of respondents
India’s semiconductor strategy is undergoing a quiet, but significant, recalibration. With the rollout of India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 2.0, New Delhi is signaling a shift away from ambition-driven leaps toward a more grounded, capability-led approach rooted in industrial realities and institutional learning. Rather than attempting to enter the most advanced nodes immediately, India has chosen to prioritize mature technologies in the 28-nanometer to 65-nanometer range. That would not be a retreat, but a strategic alignment with domestic capabilities, market demand and global supply chain gaps. The shift carries the imprimatur of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, indicating that the recalibration is
RSS