Taiwan will lodge a protest against medical journal The Lancet after it published a paper that lists Taiwan as a province of China, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said on Thursday.
The paper, authored by a Chinese research team and titled “Mortality, Morbidity and Risk Factors in China and its Provinces, 1990-2017: a Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017,” mainly covers “34” provincial-level divisions in China, with Taiwan in charts attached to it.
Ministry spokesman Wang Che-chao (王哲超) said that it would file a protest and demand that the journal issue a correction, but did not elaborate on how or when the ministry would do so.
The contents of the study are inconsistent with the fact that Taiwan is not a province of China, Wang said.
Taiwan has its own, independent disease-prevention system, he said.
The Taiwan Medical Association said in a statement that the paper has strayed from the truth, as Taiwan and China have separate medical systems.
Listing Taiwan as a province of China shows that the paper seeks to denigrate Taiwan, the association said.
It is deeply regrettable that The Lancet, a professional, peer-reviewed journal, published the study, which might be detrimental to the journal’s credibility, it said.
The paper says it scales estimates for the “34 provinces of China” to match the separately estimated all-cause mortality for China as a whole.
Hong Kong and Macau were not included in the scaling process because their data collection processes are separate from China, it said.
The Lancet posted a link to the study on its Facebook page on Tuesday, prompting comments demanding that the journal change its designation of Taiwan.
Some comments asked the journal to withdraw the paper, saying that its methodology is problematic.
The Lancet on Thursday wrote that it stands by the study.
The paper follows the guidelines and protocols of the UN and WHO, which refer to Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic of China, it said.
“This makes the study consistent with other international health analyses. Unless and until such guidelines and protocols are changed, there are no plans to alter such references to Taiwan,” it said.
The paper was written with scientific rigor and thorough data analysis required by the editors of The Lancet, it said. A hierarchical analytical model was employed, utilizing empirical data sources that include all available and relevant vital and civil registrations, census information, scientific literature and other information.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching