Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) urged the Department of Health (DOH) yesterday to ban international pharmaceutical companies from exporting genetic data gathered in Taiwan.
Huang told a press conference that several doctors had said there has been a substantial increase in the number of hospital-based projects proposed by international pharmaceutical companies to collect human genetic data here.
The information was usually exported to the companies’ home countries to establish the firms’ biological databases for new drug innovation or medical research, she said.
“Almost all the international pharmaceutical companies have been doing this. The phenomenon is particularly common among hospitals that do human experiments,” Huang said, without naming companies or hospitals.
Huang said the practice had become prevalent because the legislature had yet to pass any legislation regulating the collection of genetic information. The health department should bar the export of genetic information already collected until legislators can pass protective legislation.
“[We] have not even resolved the human rights controversy surrounding the nation’s Taiwan Biobank project,” Huang said, warning that the collection of samples could violate test subjects’ privacy.
The health department’s Taiwan Biobank project aims to collect blood samples from 200,000 people to be used in research into the connection between human genes and diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular ailments.
But DPP legislators and human rights activists have expressed concerns that the data could be put to inappropriate use without written regulations and violate participants’ human rights.
Chiou Wen-tsong (邱文聰), a member of Academia Sinica’s Human Subject Research Ethics Committee, said the existing Notice of Collection and Application of Human Body Samples for Research Purposes (研究用人體檢體採集與使用注意事項) was just an administrative order and therefore did not carry the weight of a law.
He urged the health department to submit relevant legislation as soon as possible.
DOH technical specialist Lee Shu-fang (李淑芳) said the department had submitted a draft act on the management of human biological data banks to the Executive Yuan for review.
Bureau of Medical Affairs Deputy Chief Liu Li-ling (劉麗玲) urged the public to make sure they know how their genetic information would be used when giving blood or tissue samples.
STAY AWAY: An official said people should avoid disturbing snakes, as most do not actively attack humans, but would react defensively if threatened Taitung County authorities yesterday urged the public to stay vigilant and avoid disturbing snakes in the wild, following five reported snakebite cases in the county so far this year. Taitung County Fire Department secretary Lin Chien-cheng (林建誠) said two of the cases were in Donghe Township (東河) and involved the Taiwan habus, one person was bit by a Chinese pit viper near the South Link Railway and the remaining two were caused by unidentified snakes. He advised residents near fields to be cautious of snakes hiding in shady indoor areas, especially when entering or leaving their homes at night. In case of a
A tropical disturbance off the southeastern coast of the Philippines might become the first typhoon of the western Pacific typhoon season, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The system lacks a visible center and how it would develop is only likely to become clear on Sunday or Monday, the CWA said, adding that it was not yet possible to forecast the potential typhoon's effect on Taiwan. The American Meteorological Society defines a tropical disturbance as a system made up of showers and thunderstorms that lasts for at least 24 hours and does not have closed wind circulation.
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS