A unified bone bank was established by 11 Department of Health-affiliated hospitals yesterday, which health officials said will help improve the allocation and availability of human bone tissue for use in surgery.
Chen Hsing-yuan (陳興源), an orthopedic surgeon at the Taipei Hospital, said the supply of bone was limited due to traditional beliefs that maintain the importance of leaving corpses whole.
"Even those who are willing to donate their major organs are sometimes unwilling to donate their bones," he told the news conference yesterday.
Estimates reveal that only around 17 percent of organ donors opt to donate their bones.
"We are trying to educate people about how much donated bone can help others," Chen said.
Bone tissue from just one donor can help dozens of patients including those who need bone reconstruction after serious injury, spinal fusion surgery and artificial joint replacements, he said. There is no perfect substitute for human bone for some surgical procedures, he said
Chen used the example of Ms. Hsu (
"If we had put in an artificial joint, she would likely have to deal with the repeated failure of the joint during the course of her life," Chen said. "However, since we used human bone tissue, the repairs were able to knit perfectly with her existing bone and her joint is perfectly sound."
There are artificial joints made out of titanium, he said, but they are very expensive and inferior to human bone tissue.
Family members need not be afraid that the removal of bone will impact the appearance of the body.
"Of course we ensure that the bones are replaced with supporting materials so that the body will appear the same," he said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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