The family of jailed former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday urged authorities to pay more attention to Chen’s health problems, in light of the fact that he has previously suffered a stroke.
Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), son of the former president, said a team of neurosurgeons and urologists from major medical centers should be allowed to examine his father.
“I’ve been told by doctors that people who have had a thrombotic stroke have a high chance of relapse within two to three years,” he said during a visit to Taoyuan General Hospital to see his father.
Photo: Li Jung-ping, Taipei Times
Chen Shui-bian, who is serving a 17-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption, was sent to Taoyuan General Hospital on Wednesday night after complaining of pain when urinating and was admitted for extensive examination.
A group of Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers and medical experts on Friday said that a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test earlier that day had found that the former president has a 4mm-by-4mm trace of a cerebral vascular trauma in his right frontal lobe.
The Ministry of Justice said in a statement released later that day that the MRI showed he has a 4mm clot in his right frontal lobe that was caused by brain ischemia — a type of stroke caused by insufficient blood flow to the brain — but it is unclear when the stroke occurred.
The hospital determined that the condition was unrelated to Chen Shui-bian’s headache and speech problems, the statement said, adding that his condition does not qualify him for medical parole.
Despite the ministry’s explanations, Chen’s family and supporters continued their calls for him to be released for medical reasons.
Chen Shui-bian underwent a urine test in the hospital yesterday morning and his son said that while doctors are still investigating the cause of his father’s urination problems, the more serious problem is the clot that was discovered.
Chen Shun-sheng (陳順勝), honorary vice president of Kaohsiung Chang Guan Memorial Hospital, called in to a TV political talk show on Friday night and said that considering Chen Shui-bian’s condition, the probability that he would suffer another stroke was high.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
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
RSS