A pediatrician has advised parents against having their sons circumcised for the sake of increasing their chance of having a larger penis in adulthood, saying that it is inappropriate to “pull up the seedlings only to help them grow faster.”
National Cheng Kung University Hospital pediatrician Chen Chau-jing (陳肇真) said one of the main reasons Taiwanese parents bring their children to him for a circumcision is that they feel their kids’ penises look different from theirs and need to be “dealt with.”
“While some parents cling to the folk belief that the sooner their boys’ glans is ‘set free,’ the bigger and more functional their penis will become when they grow up, others think the foreskin should be removed because it accumulates dust and dirt,” Chen said.
Chen said the foreskin was supposed to protect the glans.
“During infancy, the foreskin is attached to the glans and is generally not retractable. Forcible retraction of the foreskin may lead to bleeding, scarring and phimosis,” Chen said, urging parents not to retract their infants’ foreskin for cleansing because no dirt would accumulate under it.
Chen said while about two-thirds of boys’ glans and foreskin are not fully separated by the age of six, no surgical procedure is needed unless they experience an inflammation of the glans penis and the foreskin or urination problems, adding that less than 1 percent of boys need a circumcision for medical reasons.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift