Accusations by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislators Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉) and Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟) that independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was complicit in the harvesting of organs from patients not yet brain dead drew fire from doctors across the country.
Citing a paper on organ transplantation co-authored by Ko 15 years ago, Su, who is also the chairman of the Taiwan Medical Association, said that parts of the paper suggest that organs might have been taken from some patients before they were brain dead, and thus Ko was involved in live organ harvesting.
Ko, who used to work at NTUH before he took a year’s leave in February to run for Taipei mayor, has brushed off the accusations as politically motivated and aimed at blackening his name during the election.
A co-author of the paper, Chen Yi-hsiang (陳益祥), who is a surgeon at the National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), rebutted the allegation yesterday.
“We certainly consulted the families of the patients and obtained their consent before the operations. If we didn’t, their families would have protested,” Chen said. “We didn’t start the transplantations until the patients were dead, and we had consent from their families — to be more accurate, we were working on corpses.”
Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德), who was also a doctor before becoming a politician, said it was very inappropriate for Su to make such an accusation.
“He is no longer qualified to serve as head of the Taiwan Medical Association. He should resign from it, because he’s an embarrassment to all medical personnel,” Lai said.
Meanwhile, a netizen said the accusations of organ harvesting at the nation’s leading hospital rub salt in the wounds of family members who have approved organ donations.
Posting on Professional Technology Temple (PTT) — the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board — a user by the name of “siberia” recounted the story of his mother’s death as an example of the pain family members experience in deciding whether or not to agree to organ donation.
“[My mother] didn’t even have the chance to see my first paycheck,” said “siberia,” adding that he is a physician. After he graduated from medical school, his mother suffered severe brain damage when a cerebral aneurysm burst on his second day of work. After a second cerebral aneurysm burst later the same week and left her in a severe and irreversible coma, his father broached the subject of organ donation.
“I struggled more in that moment than at any other time in my life,” he wrote, even though his mother had signed a consent form and he knew how rare her undamaged organs were.
He and his father — also a physician — ultimately decided in favor of allowing the organs to be donated, but were overruled by other family members.
“Siberia” called the accusations of organ harvesting irresponsible and insensitive, rubbing salt in the wounds of family members and discouraging further donations.
“The government is allowing the efforts behind organ donation in Taiwan to perish in a moment for the sake of an election,” said “siberia,” adding that every day in Taiwan there are 70,000 people who undergo dialysis.
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