Money Laundering – Japanese Style

Nature is constantly trying to keep populations in check, fighting the explosion of human beings with a nasty confluence of death, pestilence, famine and war. Just as quickly as we find a cure for one disease, nature's challenge is to find a new disease for which there is no cure. Doctors and researchers react, pharmaceutical manufacturers invent, cures proliferate and the cycle begins again. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he population of the world reached one billion in 1804, two billion in 1927, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987 , and six billion in 1999. It is projected to reach seven billion by late 2011, and around eight billion by 2025. By 2045-2050, the world's population is currently projected to reach around nine billion, with alternative scenarios ranging from 7.4 billion to 10.6 billion." Nature has got her work cut out for her.

So-called "superbugs" – treatment-resistant microorganisms – have proliferated of late. Whether antibiotic resistance mutates its way into a germ "subculture" or entirely new ailments enter the world (much the way HIV exploded), clearly the battle is perpetual and unwinnable… except for those momentary victories until the germ-genetics "wise up." It's always about the "next." Indeed, history provides examples of both military (obvious) and medical conquests; the Spaniards infected the native population in many regions they entered, and those not speared or shot or stabbed often succumbed to new strains of disease "imported" from the old world.

Visions of infected Japanese politely wearing surgical masks in public – perhaps others wearing surgical masks as a facial prophylactic against such infections – suggests a society with sterile environments and germ-free life in mind. Where does this seeming obsession come from? Factsanddetails.com suggests this explanation: "In Buddhism cleanliness is associated with morality. In Shintoism it is associated with purity. By contrast in Greco-Roman and Western tradition cleaning was a manual task left to the lower classes."

So it is particularly interesting to see exactly how Japanese society reacts to the unpleasant infusion of new superbugs into their immediate surroundings. Bloomberg.com (September 6^th) reports one such instance: "Forty-six patients have been infected with a drug-resistant bacterium called Acinetobacter at Tokyo’s Teikyo University Hospital over the past year, the Yomiuri newspaper reported today. The report also said bacteria with the NDM-1 gene, resistant to almost all antibiotics, was identified for the first time in Japan yesterday in a patient at Dokkyo Medical University Hospital, north of Tokyo." Not good news. According to DailyFinance.com (September 7^th): "The infection was detected at a university hospital, where a Japanese man was treated for E. coli after traveling to South Asia, according to the Japan Times…. Patients in other countries have been infected, many after traveling to Asia for low-cost medical procedures."

Perhaps the Japanese can find allies in their anti-bacterial quest with the warm and fuzzy cockroach. Why? ALONews (September 7^th) explains: “Chemicals found in the brain and central nervous tissues of cockroaches are able to kill 90 percent of dangerous bacteria in lab-based tests... British researchers at the University of Nottingham's School of Veterinary Medicine and Science are behind the discovery, which entails harnessing molecules from the t issues of cockroaches and locusts to combat bacteria like E. coli and MRSA (drug-resistant staph infections).” Maybe the “roach clip” will have other uses in Japan, but there are always the more traditional approaches to consider.

Surgical masks are lovely Japanese reactions to such unwelcome germ infestations, but this one is particularly Japanese: "In the late 1990s, Japanese banks introduced ATM machines that dispensed clean money. These machine take in wrinkled and dirty yen banknotes, feed them through rollers, heating them to 392°F and dispensing the notes clean, crisp and 90 percent bacteria free. 'Virgin money,' Evelyn Richards wrote in the Washington Post, 'plays an especially key rule at weddings, where cash is the favored gift. No respectable Japanese would give anything but untainted bills.'… The clean money machines were invented by Hitachi by accident. In the process of inventing a process to iron out crumbled bills with 392°F heat, they discovered that the high temperature also kills bacteria. Explaining why disinfected cash is popular with young women, a bank spokesmen said, many 'say they don't want to touch things handled by middle-aged men.'" Factsanddetails.com. But of course! So completely obvious!

Where is the silver lining in all this… other than a Malthusian sigh of relief from Mother Nature? Bloomberg says it sweetly… if you are an investor: "Taiko Pharmaceutical Co., a Japanese maker of antiseptics, rose the most since listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange after several types of drug-resistant bacteria [the above NDM-1 strain] were reportedly found in the country." Not really good news if you are one of the 46 infected above, however.

I'm Peter Dekom and as Roseanne Roseannadanna said so well, "Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it's always something..."