Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) yesterday urged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus to cease stalling cross-party negotiations for a draft amendment she proposed in April to the Human Organ Transplantation Act (人體器官移植條例), a move she said could offer a solution to the nation’s insufficient supply of donated organs.
Tien made the call at a press conference in Taipei yesterday morning, one day after she attended a news conference held by medical and human right groups urging the government to reject former Chinese deputy minister of health Huang Jiefu’s (黃潔夫) proposal for the establishment of a mechanism to facilitate organ donations from China to Taiwan.
“The draft amendment passed its initial legislative committee review in May, but as of today, no cross-party negotiation session on the matter has been convened,” Tien said. “More than 8,000 people in the country are in desperate need of an organ while the KMT caucus procrastinates.”
Photo: Liu Hsin- De, Taipei Times
Tien’s draft amendment includes several major changes to the country’s organ donation and transplantation system, including offering a legal basis to the process for retrieving organs from donors with no heartbeat and requesting relevant government agencies to inquire over people’s willingness to donate organs when they apply or renew ID cards, driver’s licenses or National Health Insurance cards.
It would permit people to donate kidneys — the organ that is most in demand in the country — to someone they are emotionally related to, even if the recipient is not a third-degree blood relative, as required by the current regulations.
Another major change is the criminalization of organ sales and the knowing receipt of organs of unknown origin.
Tien said KMT Lawmaker Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍) is the only person who can call a cross-party negotiation, as she was the one who put the draft amendment on the agenda for committee review.
However, the KMT caucus cited campaign work for the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections as the reason the matter was put off and canceled the only negotiation session it had arranged in the past seven months just five days before its scheduled date on Wednesday last week, Tien said.
“Its handling of the issue makes me wonder if the government is trying to maintain the current outdated regulations to pave the way for Huang’s proposal,” she added.
Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants deputy director-general Huang Shi-wei (黃士維) said the price for a kidney transplant in China has surged from NT$1 million (US$32,900) a decade ago to NT$4 million today, while the cost of a liver transplant has risen from NT$2 million to nearly NT$8 million over the same period.
“The dramatic price hikes suggest that organ donation and transplant is not a medical practice in China, but an exploitative business,” Huang Shi-wei said, urging the legislature to immediately pass the amendment to prevent more Taiwanese from receiving potentially immorally harvested organs in China.
Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Department of Medical Affairs senior executive officer Liu Yu-ching (劉玉菁) said that while there are about 200 organ donors per year in Taiwan, the ministry’s new policy, which gives people priority on the transplant waiting list if their spouse or a third-degree relative was an organ or tissue donor, is expected to help boost organ donations.
“As for Huang Jiefu’s proposal, it is an absolutely infeasible plan given the time constraints on organ viability and the large disparity between the laws of two sides across the Taiwan Strait,” Liu said.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard