2/28/2012

A heaven for the bureaucrats

Prof. S. Nakayama of Kyoto Univ., one of the leaders in the research for IPS cell in the world, is gathering the fund in the internet. He has been nominated for the nobel prize winner in medical science. They aim at "ten million JPY", that is, twelve hundred thousand USD. It seems to be used for hiring the researchers at the laboratory. They are getting much donation so far.

No big deal for a fund of such a cutting edge filed of medical science. It is a shame that our government won't pay for that. Prof. Nakayama should not have sweated for gathering donations etc. He should have many more things to do. His appeal for donation reveals how the government and the government agencies are treating those scientists in Japan who may contribute much to the world.

There are hundreds of juridical persons established by the bureaucrats and the retired bureaucrats which are paid much by the government or by the particular industries. The beaurocrats are always responsible for regulation of the related industry. Such juridical persons are accepting many retirees from the government agents. It is called "Amakudari" which stands for "coming down from the heaven" in japanese. Those Amakudari may, no wonder, make profits to particular industry in negotiating with the bueaucrats regarding regulation etc.

One of the growing juridical persons in medical service field is Japan Council for Quality Health Care;JCQHC. It handles the qualification for the medical service facility, which they require the medical facility tremendous money for. This qualification is famous for its meaninglessness. They would question the amount of paper works or of various committee activities mostly meaningless for improving the quality of medical facilities. The real quality of the medical service fronts or the burden of the medical staff duties are not questioned by this council.

Recently, they have started the compensation system for the cerebral palsy in the obstetric area. It is a kind of insurance. They collect certain money for each birth from obstetric facility and pay to the parents of the unfortunate cases of cerebral palsy inevitable in certain probability which the medical services are not responsible for. They narrow down the objective cases they pay for. It eventually leaves so much reserve within the juridical person up to several thousand million JPY, that is, several ten million USD per a year. This reserve may, I guess, be used for the retiree payments or their salaries in the future. This is just an example. There are many more same cases in Japan.

On the other hand, those researchers have much difficulty to get enough fund for their important works as described in the beginning of this post.

Isn't it a big shame?

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