Parents yesterday claimed that the results of drug tests conducted on their youngsters after they were hospitalized on Friday last week came back positive, turning what had been thought to be a case of mild food poisoning into a case of alleged drug poisoning.
The students had been attending a cooking class at Kunshan Senior High School in Greater Tainan and had eaten cake made in the class and drank black tea before they were hospitalized with symptoms similar to those for food poisoning.
Ten students from Chongming Junior High School and one from Kunshan were hospitalized.
Chongming head counselor Hu Chao-yi (胡朝義) said the school had conducted tests on the black tea and students’ urine samples, adding that both results came back positive, and the school considered that the black tea was to blame as some students said it tasted odd.
Of the 11 students that were hospitalized, three are still in hospital, though their symptoms of involuntary tremors and shortness of breath have ameliorated, Tainan Municipal Hospital deputy superintendent Chen Yi (陳怡) said.
Samples were taken on Friday last week and sent to a lab at Taipei General Veterans Hospital for analysis, the bureau said.
Veterans’ Department of toxicology resident Yang Chen-chang (楊振昌) said that he had already received the samples and would have the results within three to five days.
Yang said that he was not excluding the possibility that the students ingested adrenergic receptor agonists, which often includes drugs such as amphetamine or MDMA.
Adrenergic receptor agonists are usually metabolized within six to 12 hours and the students should be fine, Yang said, adding that there can be no conclusive answer on what the students had ingested before the lab results come out.
Tainan City Government’s Bureau of Health head Lin Sheng-che (林聖哲) said on Wednesday, when he visited the students who were still in the hospital that their symptoms were not like food poisoning.
Lin, who was a doctor by profession before entering governmental service, said that the students’ involuntary hand tremors were due to abnormal electrical current output in the brain, adding that such situations were usually indicative of rare viruses or the remnants of heavy metals, pesticides or other drugs.
Lin said that he could not determine what was actually causing the condition until he had seen the report.
Additional reporting by Meng hing-tzu and Wei Yi-chia
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods