A recent appeal from a severely disabled Tainan man for legalization of voluntary euthanasia has rekindled an issue that is seldom the center of public discourse.
Born in 1956, Tsai Ching-hsiung (蔡清雄) contracted polio when he was a child, causing the muscles of both his legs and his right arm to shrink. Despite his limitations, he has engaged in charity work for nearly 30 years in Tainan, earning him the nickname “the little disabled giant” around his neighborhood.
For more than two decades, Tsai has made regular visits with friends to nursing homes to chat and sing with the residents, and sometimes he helps out as the electrician, plumber or maintenance worker to help fix damaged facilities.
Photo: Wang Chun-chung, Taipei Times
He also takes the residents and others for picnics on his modified motor vehicle over weekends.
Tsai said on Sunday that he believes he survived his illness to do something meaningful. He does his best to live daily life using his left arm, the only limb that functions properly, so that his mother and other family members will not worry about his future.
In 1986, he decided to donate his body and organs to National Cheng Kung University’s College of Medicine after death.
As he often spends his time with disadvantaged people, many of Tsai’s friends are living in difficult circumstances, such as a friend in his 50s who cannot take care of himself and has relied on his parents. Tsai said that his friend’s parents are now in their 80s and have become too old to take care of him, and he has been having suicidal thoughts.
Tsai empathizes with his friends and hopes that Taiwan will legalize voluntary euthanasia so that he and others have a choice to live or die without becoming a burden to their family, society or the nation.
“People want to live meaningful lives and die with dignity. Taiwan has legalized same-sex marriage, so the government should show the same sense of progress to consider legalizing euthanasia,” he said.
Six lawmakers from the Tainan region spoke on the issue, expressing a range of opinions.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lai Hui-yuan (賴惠員) said legalizing euthanasia concerns many moral and ethical principles, and cannot be decided in a black-and-white way.
She said Taiwan has the Hospice Palliative Care Act (安寧緩和醫療條例) and the Patient Right to Autonomy Act (病人自主權利法), which allow some forms of euthanasia.
“There is no consensus on ‘proactive’ euthanasia. The autonomy and value of a life is difficult to debate in normal circumstances. Moral, ethical and religious beliefs make the discussion even more complicated,” she said.
DPP Legislator Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) said Taiwanese need to discuss the issue more to reach a consensus among the affected parties, or else a bill to legalize euthanasia could be seen as “a murderous law.”
DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said northern European countries legalized euthanasia after providing the public with sufficient social services so that governments would not be held accountable for failing to protect the disadvantaged.
However, Taiwan does not have the socioeconomic conditions to enact such services, which opens up a wider debate among healthcare practitioners, she said.
DPP Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said legalizing euthanasia is not only a choice between life and death, but a tug-of-war between the wants of close friends and relatives and the affected person’s physical pain and despair.
The affection shared between patients and their families, their legal rights, the standards by which a decision is made to end a life, and the right to make that decision are all issues that comprise the debate Taiwanese society, he said.
DPP Legislator Lin I-chin (林宜瑾) said the issue is not a simple yes-or-no question, involving discussions of morality, the role of the law, human rights, medical ethics and other values.
The Hospice Palliative Care Act and the Patient Right to Autonomy Act could provide a framework for discussion, she added.
Seeking a consensus on this issue is a long road, DPP Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
The government and society should embrace the topic and start conversations on the role of euthanasia in society, and how it might be worked into law, he said.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
RSS