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Mix-Ansicht- Japan - where do we go next...? - lentas, 29.12.2000, 11:22
- Japan ist anders, weil Japaner anders sind - Toni, 29.12.2000, 13:34
- Re: Japan - where do we go next...? - Baldur der Ketzer, 29.12.2000, 21:53
Japan ist anders, weil Japaner anders sind
Der hier grösstenteils abgetippte Artikel erschien am 13. März 1999 im New Scientist. Das Thema selber (Airbags und plötzlicher Kindstod) ist vielleicht etwas komisch, aber die japanische Denkweise wird anhand dieser Beispiele sehr eindrücklich geschildert.
Kategorie kopfschüttelschüttel.
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In the dark
Hundreds of babies died while Japan did its own cot death study. By Peter Hadfield, Tokyo
Last month, the Japanese Ministry of Transport told drivers:"after an extensive study, bureaucrats at the ministry have concluded that airbags on their own are not as effective as airbags used in conjunction with seat belts."
If this sounds obvious to drivers elsewhere, it is because most Western governments have been issuing similar cautions for years. Although Japan may be at the cutting edge of much modern technology, it is often some way behind on the sort of science that affects the lives of ordinary citizens.
The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) issued a similarly bleated admonition last year, when it announced the results of its two-year study into sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The study showed that more babies die if they sleep on their stomachs than on their backs.... The warning was not unlike the one given six years earlier by the American Academy of Paediatrics and other Western medical authorities. So why did Japan wait so long to act on cot deaths?
"We discussed whether or not to give a warning in 1996,... but there was a strong opinion that Japan should launch its own study because there could be biological or cultural differences."
This view is common in Japan. Visitors to the country are soon told by their hosts that Japanese intestines are longer, their physiology more complex and their brains structured"differently" from non-Japanese people. Hence any study done by non-Japanese researchers cannot automatically be applied to Japan. This may be true for drugs, of course,... But seat belts? Sleeping positions for babies?
Would it not have been good policy for the MHW to at least have told Japanese parents about the conclusions of the foreign studies, I asked the MHW official:"It would cause confusion," he replied.
Konran or"confusion", is a catch-all bureaucratic word for anything that happens without official sanction. If bureaucrats are not there to regulate things, the thinking goes, people might start deciding things for themselves and then anarchy would reign....
[XY] who was in charge of the MHW's study, tells me that he wanted to publicise the overseas findings back in 1996. But he was voted down by two-thirds of the study group."We had no scientific explanation of why the prone position is related to SIDS," he adds."Few Japanes are ever prepared to propagate what they cannot explain," he claims.
And yet we still do not know what causes SIDS. What the MHW knows now is exactly that it knew six years ago - that if babies sleep on their stomachs it increases their chances of SIDS, just as not wearing a seat belt increases your chance of injury in an accident even if you are protected by an air bag.
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Herzliche Grüsse
Toni
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