The medical community has ridiculed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei’s (羅淑蕾) claim that independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), dubbed the “father of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation” (ECMO) technology in Taiwan, does not know how to install the life-support equipment.
Lo made the claim in an episode of the Weekend News Hunter (週末新聞追追追) political talk show that aired on Saturday night, saying that Ko, the head of National Taiwan University Hospital’s (NTUH) Department of Traumatology, “does not perform surgeries and offer outpatient service, nor does he know how to install ECMOs.”
Lo’s claims were dismissed by Ko’s campaign spokesperson Billy Pan (潘建志), who said Ko has a license for ECMO installation.
“I also have a driver’s license. Does everyone who has a driver’s license necessarily know how to drive? I don’t think so. I am telling the truth, go ask any NTUH doctor,” Lo said.
Former NTUH physician Liu Lin-wei (柳林瑋) dismissed Lo’s remarks on Facebook late on Saturday, saying that it did not matter whether Ko knows how to install ECMOs because that is the job of the hospital’s department of cardiac surgery.
“[Media company] Watchout owns several Web sites, but as a manager of the company, I myself do not know how to write code for a site,” Liu said.
“Based on Lo’s theory, she may as well also take aim at the hospital’s superintendent [Huang Guan-tarn (黃冠棠)], a general physician who also does not perform surgery,” Liu said, adding that she could also ask former Taipei EasyCard Corp (悠遊卡股份有限公司) chairman Sean Lien (連勝文), the KMT’s Taipei mayoral candidate, whether he can make an EasyCard on his own.
Ko campaign advisor Hung Chi-kune (洪智坤) also rejected Lo’s comments.
“First, she accused Ko of selling ECMO machines [to China]. Now she said Ko is not capable of installing ECMOs. Is she going to tell us Ko does not even know how to use plastic wrap tomorrow?” Hung said.
Hung was referring to Lo’s remarks on the same show on Thursday last week, when she questioned Ko’s 18 visits to China and asked whether he was there to teach Chinese doctors how to install ECMOs or sell them the equipment.
When reached for comment, Ko, who introduced ECMO technology into Taiwan from the US in 1994, started by joking about whether Apple cofounder Steve Jobs knew how to assemble iPhones.
“If I do not know how to install an ECMO, from whom do you think those doctors who carried out the first ECMO operation in Taiwan learned the technology?” Ko said.
Ko said he had rarely performed ECMO on patients since he began leading the hospital’s ECMO team, adding that all his students had surpassed their teacher.
Additional reporting by Wu Chia-hsiang
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