Dozens of doctors and medical students in Taipei yesterday delivered a petition signed by netizens to the Taiwan Medical Association urging Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉) to resign as the association’s chairman and apologize to the public over recent remarks.
Among the group were members of the Taiwan Medical Alliance for Labor Justice and Patient Safety — an organization founded in 2012 by a group of doctors dedicated to reforming the nation’s healthcare system — including Shih Jin-chung (施景中), an attending physician at National Taiwan University Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Fang Jui-wen (方瑞雯), a doctor at Taipei Municipal Gan-Dau Hospital’s Division of Family Medicine; and Chiayi Chang Gung Memorial Hospital physician Tony Hsu (許宏志).
They chanted the slogan: “Politicians stay away from the medical community, doctors focus on saving lives,” before delivering the letter, addressed to Su, to association secretary-general Tsai Ming-chung (蔡明忠).
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
“While it is the right of people to elect their president, we, as doctors, do not have a say in how the association chooses its chairman and board members. That is why only a few of them are reputed medical practitioners ... and why the association has been used as a bargaining chip for political interests,” Shih said outside the association headquarters in Daan District (大安).
Shih said Su had already courted controversy before he accused the university hospital on Thursday last week of having given high doses of phentolamine and heparin to 26 trauma patients in the past 15 years to trick district prosecutors into issuing death certificates for potential organ donors.
“When the government proposed an increase to the tobacco health and welfare surcharge [in March], Su opposed the plan, saying that smoking was one of the few pleasures left for lower-middle-class people and that the government should not take that away from them,” Shih said. “When emergency care doctors were beaten by patients’ parents’ families, Su said it must have been because the doctors were indifferent or idiotic.”
Shih said the physician-turned-KMT lawmaker stirred up further controversy by saying that problematic oils involved in a seemingly endless string of cooking oil scandals in recent months were safe to eat if they met government standards.
“Nearly 70 percent of the 47,000 people who have signed the online petition launched on Thursday last week are medical personnel,” Shih said. “If Su refuses to step down as chairman voluntarily, we will launch a movement to impeach him instead.”
Fang said Su’s accusations have hurt not only people who specialize in organ procurement and transplants, but also the families of organ donors, who might be tormented by questions over whether it was their decision to donate their loved ones’ organs that led to their death.
“Taiwan already faces a difficult road to facilitate organ procurement. We urge everyone to cherish the country’s hard-earned achievements in the field rather than tarnishing them,” Fang said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center chairman Lee Po-chang (李伯璋) yesterday said he is relieved that Su’s accusations have led to a noticeable increase in the number of people signing up to be organ donors, as opposed to a decrease as he had feared.
Lee said that from August to last month, an average of 190 people per month registered as organ donors, while about nine people applied to have their names removed from the registry in each month.
“However, since the beginning of this month, 426 people have added their names to the organ donation register, including 233 from Thursday last week through Monday,” Lee said, adding that the center has received only 16 applications for removal from the registry in the same period.
“The trend indicates that Taiwanese are aware that [Su’s accusations] were motivated merely by the [nine-in-one] elections and that they still have faith in the nation’s organ donation system,” he said.
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