A death row inmate, who had one of his kidneys removed on Monday to give to his ailing sister, said in a letter he wrote before the operation that he wished to use his remaining organs to save more people.
Cheng Chin-wen (鄭金文) wrote that he would offer whatever righteousness that came from the organ donation to the people he murdered.
The 100-plus Chinese-character letter was made public on Tuesday by Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇) after the operation at the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei City (新北市).
Photo: CNA
In the letter, Cheng expressed gratitude to the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Health (DOH) and the public for giving him “a chance to show remorse” and to apologize to the families of the people he had murdered.
Cheng is believed to be the first ever living death row organ donor in the nation’s history.
He decided to give his sister one of his healthy kidneys after the Supreme Court in June finalized his death sentence for strangling two debt collectors to death in 2004 and burying their bodies in the woods in Keelung.
The request was approved by the hospital’s medical ethics committee on Wednesday last week after passing reviews by the ministry and DOH.
The operation, which began at 11:20am, was successful and concluded at 2:20pm, an hour earlier than scheduled, said Chen Kuo-hsin (陳國鋅), the surgeon in charge.
The donor was recovering well, Chen said, while the sister who received the organ was still under observation given the risk of organ rejection.
Shih Chung-liang (石崇良), the DOH’s director-general in charge of medical affairs, said the department did not encourage the lobbying of death row inmates to have them donate their organs after being executed because of the potential ethical disputes that could arise.
The DOH believes, however, that the potential for disputes is eliminated if such inmates voluntarily agree to donate organs while they are alive, he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the