Facing the possibility that they might have to destroy stored human blood and tissue samples because of a law on human biomedical samples passed last year, researchers yesterday urged the government to help them find a different solution.
Adopted on Feb. 3 last year, the Human Body Biological Database Management Act (人體生物資料庫管理條例) includes a one-year buffer period for researchers to obtain the required permits or consent to store human blood and tissue samples. After the deadline next year, all samples without proper paperwork have to be destroyed.
The biomedical industry estimates that by Feb. 5, it might have to destroy more than 1 million samples stored by hospital laboratories, biotech companies, or genetic databases that were before the legislation was enacted.
Epidemiologist Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), who is a research fellow at Academia Sinica, said many important research projects, such as one on a lung cancer gene, have been suspended because the deadline is approaching.
He said that researchers took years to establish human biological databases. If they want to keep the samples, researchers now have to go back to ask the providers whether they agree that the samples can be used for new research, to submit the renewed agreement papers to the ethnics committee and then continue their research only after the renewed agreement passes a committee review, he said.
Academia Sinica researcher Chen Ting-hsin (陳定信), who specializes in hepatitis studies, said he had obtained human biological samples for research on Hepatitis B and gained consent from the providers to use the specimen in research.
“Now researchers have found that they could use the same samples for research on Hepatitis C, but have to go back to the patients to get their consent for using their samples for Hepatitis C studies,” he said. “It may seem easy in words, but it’s hard to do.”
Chen Chien-jen said that because the new law puts restrictions on exporting human biological samples, it would become more difficult for Taiwan to be included in transnational clinical studies.
Director of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Bureau of Medical Affairs, Shih Chung-liang (石崇良), said there were two possible ways to resolve the problem researchers face under the new law.
If the sample provider did not specify which research projects their samples were authorized to be used on, researchers may use the sample for new studies as long as the ethics committee approves, Shih said.
Shih said that researchers may also hide all information related to the sample provider so that it would be impossible to find out who that person was, or keep the sample temporarily until obtaining renewed consent before initiating new research.
However, several human rights groups, including the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Human Sample Protection Association Taiwan, the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association and Taiwan Women’s Link, issued a joint statement yesterday calling on the DOH to execute the law as it is and destroy all unauthorized samples on Feb. 5. If the department violates the law, the statement said, they would report the case to the Control Yuan.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS