The National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) on Saturday convened a consultative conference with medical professionals and officials to approve intestinal microbiota transplants as a legal medical procedure in the nation.
Fecal microbiota transplants, in which microbes derived from the feces of a healthy donor are transferred to a patient, are the primary treatment for intestinal infections caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile and for weight loss.
The medical procedure has been legalized in the US, Europe and China, where it has been used successfully, but Taiwan still considers it an experimental treatment in the clinical trial stage, Ministry of Health and Welfare officials said.
The human intestinal tract contains thousands of species of bacteria, including beneficial strands, but people taking antibiotics often lose all of their intestinal microbes except for C difficile, institute chairman Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) said.
As C difficile is resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin, fecal microbiota transplants are a useful alternative medical treatment, Lin said.
Legally, the government will have to determine whether the therapy is a new medical procedure or a new drug, he said.
Medical procedures are approved by the ministry’s Department of Medical Affairs in accordance with relevant medical laws and regulations, while medicines are approved after passing Food and Drug Administration-supervised clinical trials, he added.
The NHRI might collaborate with local medical professionals’ associations to create a platform to evaluate potential donors and conduct genetic screenings, he said.
Department of Medical Affairs Director-General Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said the international scientific consensus is that such transplants are efficacious and safe.
The procedure has clear treatment guidelines and is mature enough to be incorporated into the nation’s medical practices, he said.
The ministry can establish human clinical trials or other protocols should any doubts exist, he said, adding that it plans to publish in April a preview of the procedure’s regulations, which it could promulgate as soon as June.
While its application in experimental trials has been successful, attesting to the nation’s medical expertise, the procedure is still awaiting regulatory approval, he said.
The nation’s medical and pharmaceutical sectors have inherent advantages, but regulators need to be more efficient in keeping up with the pace of technological change, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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