The recent death of award-winning film director Edward Yang (楊德昌) from complications resulting from colon cancer has drawn attention to the high incidence of the disease in Taiwan.
Yang, who won the best director award in 2000 at the Cannes Film Festival, died on June 29 at his home in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 59. He had fought colon cancer for seven years but kept his illness private.
Shen Min-yin (沈名吟), a colorectal surgeon at the Hsinchu Hospital, said on Wednesday that people should be proactive about screening for colon cancer because when symptoms begin to appear, the disease is already at an advanced stage.
Shen cited a number of public figures who have been diagnosed with colon cancer, including Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (
He said people over 50 years of age should have a stool blood test every year and be screened with a flexible sigmoidoscope -- a long, thin tube with a tiny camera on the end -- every five years to look for problems in the rectum and lower colon.
Shen suggested that those in groups at higher risk of the disease, including people with a family history of colon cancer and people who have inflammatory bowel disease, should have a colonoscopy every year.
Colon cancer is the third most common form of cancer -- behind breast cancer and liver cancer -- in Taiwan, and the third leading cause of cancer deaths after lung cancer and liver cancer.
In addition to regular screening, the risk of developing colon cancer can be reduced by exercising three to five times a week, avoiding greasy food, maintaining an adequate level of fiber in one's diet, limiting alcohol intake, not smoking and keeping one's weight down, according to doctors.
The symptoms of colon cancer may not be apparent early on, but a change in bowel habits, such as constipation or diarrhea, and blood in the stool are warning signs of potential trouble.
Doctors say that early detection of the disease is important because it increases the survival rate to five times that of late-stage colon cancer patients.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods