The Executive Yuan passed a draft amendment to the Organ Transplant Act (人體器官移植條例) yesterday, raising fines for those who sell organs for transplant or those who broker organ sales.
The amendment proposed by the Department of Health would subject those providing their organs for sale, organ brokers and medical institutions that perform transplants with purchased organs to fines between NT$200,000 (US$6,000) and NT$1 million, from the current NT$90,000 and NT$450,000.
The proposal will be referred to the legislature for review.
The draft seeks to tighten the rules for 18 and 19-year-olds donating part of their livers. If the proposal is passed, teens will only be allowed to donate an organ to blood relatives within five generations with the consent of their guardians. Only adults will be allowed to make liver donations to their in-laws, the draft states.
Those who want to donate their organs after death will be able to indicate this on their National Health Insurance cards, the draft states.
At present, people who are willing to be donors usually carry a card from the Organ Donation Association of the Republic of China.
The proposal would also abolish an article that obliges hospital staff to try to persuade family members of potential organ donors to donate the patients’ organs after death.
In related news, the head of the Transplantation Society of Taiwan said its research showed that about 5,000 patients had kidney transplants in the past 10 years, but almost half had the surgery in a foreign country, mostly in China.
“Many of these patients have their kidney transplants done in China, the Philippines, India, Pakistan and the US, but most go to China,” Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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