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FEATURE: Speaking up
on Taiwan¡¦s name brings positive response for renowned doctor
Staff Writer, with CNA
Taiwan is not a province of China, but in many international occasions Taiwanese
need to fight for that simple fact to be recognized, a Kaohsiung doctor said as
he related his own experience of trying to have Taiwan¡¦s proper name adopted by
international organ transplant societies.
Chen Chao-long (³¯»F¶©), superintendent of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in
Kaohsiung, is a world famous liver transplant surgeon. He said that in 2001, he
began taking note of a common practice adopted by US and European medical
associations ¡X that of listing Taiwan as a ¡§Province of China.¡¨
Before the May 2001 annual convention for the American Society of
Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons in Chicago, Chen
said he submitted two abstracts online to the organizers.
On the organizer¡¦s Web page, when he tried to click on ¡§Taiwan,¡¨ what appeared
was ¡§Taiwan, Province of China.¡¨ The title could not be changed, as it was
designed to appear that way automatically, he said.
In April 2001, Chen sent an e-mail to the then-president of the American Society
of Transplantation, Nancy Ascher, saying that he and other members of his
research team would not accept their country being called a province of China.
At the same time, he told his overseas friends in the medical profession that
the convention organizers had not been careful or sensitive enough about listing
his country¡¦s name, he said.
He suggested that the organizers simply change his team¡¦s nationality to
¡§Taiwan¡¨ and delete the ¡§Province of China¡¨ entry in the abstract and program
booklets.
Chen said his efforts were rewarded when Ascher replied to him with an apology,
saying she had taken the issue seriously and had never thought of it as a
problem.
Ascher promised to make changes to the booklets, but said changing Taiwan¡¦s
title in the abstract could be a problem because it was several hundred pages
long and was therefore too big to reprint, Chen said.
On May 10, 2001, when Chen and his team members arrived in Chicago for the
convention, the name Taiwan, instead of ¡§Taiwan, Province of China,¡¨ appeared
not only in the convention¡¦s program, but also in the abstract.
What delighted him even more was that from then on, all Taiwanese delegations
were able to use the title of Taiwan at all sorts of international conferences
on transplantation, he said.
According to Chen, the lesson is that ¡§you¡¦ve got to be a respected partner in
your profession and you have to fight for your legitimate rights in a reasonable
way.¡¨
¡§As long as both sides want to maintain exchanges in the spirit of mutual
respect, the international organizations most likely will support us,¡¨ he said.
Chen is a pioneer surgeon who in 1984 performed the first successful liver
transplant in Asia.
In 1994, he performed the nation¡¦s first live donor liver transplantation. He
carried out the first split-liver transplantation in Asia in 1997. He started
the living adult donor liver transplantation program in Taiwan in 1999 and
performed the first dual-graft live donor liver transplantation in Taiwan in
2002.
He became superintendent of the Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in 2003.
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