Taipei Times
Date: Jun 30, 2019
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday strongly condemned a newspaper for publishing a
letter advising people to ingest a small amount of the highly toxic herbicide paraquat to prevent mosquito bites and reduce the risk of death from dengue fever.The CDC said it has asked for the letter to be removed from the newspaper’s Web site and that it would report the situation to the police, as it might constitute a breach of Article 63 of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which stipulates punishments for spreading rumors that might undermine public peace and order.
The Chinese-language newspaper last week published the letter sent by a person surnamed Chen (陳), who claimed to be a student at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Biotechnology.
Chen wrote that Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) should use paraquat to fight dengue fever.
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