Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming (
"The researcher caught the disease because of negligence. This personal mistake has had an impact on society. The stock market plunged over 100 points on Wednesday after the news of the first SARS case this winter," Tang said.
"I apologize on behalf of the military to the public for the mistake made by the researcher," he said.
Tang made the remarks yesterday after a ceremony marking the beginning of construction of a new office building for the Ministry of National Defense, responding to inquiries from the press.
Though blaming the researcher for having caused so much trouble, Tang called on the public not to be too harsh on him.
After giving the researcher a tongue-lashing, Tang went on to praise him, calling him a "hard-working" man who has found over 100 anti-SARS agents from among more than 10,000 medical specimens.
The researcher is a lieutenant colonel with the institute of preventive medicine, a top-security unit which has long been associated with secret biological developments. He is 44, identified only by the surname of Jan.
The department of health confirmed Jan's infection with SARS on Wednesday.
Jan acknowledged to health authorities that he might have caught the disease because of an inadvertent mistake he made while processing a laboratory experiment at his institute. He has been engaged in research on SARS since the outbreak of the disease this summer.
National defense medical bureau director Lieutenant General Chang Sheng-yuan (
"Whether Jan will be disciplined depends on the results of investigations into the accident. We know Jan was alone in the lab at the time of the accident. We only know that he was trying to destroy certain test samples without wearing any gloves. He used tissue to wipe up liquid oozing from the test tube holding the samples," Chang said.
"It has yet to be confirmed whether this act was the cause of the SARS infection. There might be other possibilities," he said.
The SARS infection tarnished the image of the institute of preventive medicine, which has been one of the military's top secrets and which operates one of the world's most advanced biological research facilities.
The researcher published a report in November in which he claimed a kind of herb called "pig thigh" was very effective against SARS. But the herb apparently had no effect on him.
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