Dogs and Demons   ::   Керр Алекс

Rather than use a foreign drug with proven value, the MHW encourages local firms to produce copycat medicines with little or no efficacy and sometimes with terrible side effects. These are known as zoro-yaku, « one after another medicines,» because firms put them out one after another. In order to protect the zoro-yaku business, the MHW collaborates with drug companies in hiding deaths from side effects. In one notorious case in the 1980s, the MHW allowed drug firms to continue distributing a zoro-yaku polio vaccine even after it had killed dozens of children, the aim being to protect the makers from the financial loss of recalling unused supply After decades of producing zoro-yaku, and failing to test or monitor medicines properly (the United States' FDA has a hundred drug inspectors, while Japan's MHW has two; the FDA has elaborate drug-testing protocols, while the MHW has none), Japan's pharmaceuticals are hopelessly behind in technology and today have only a tiny international presence. Where the big European and American drug makers are inventing revolutionary treatments for arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, not to mention drugs like Viagra and Rogaine, Taisho Chemical, one of Japan's major pharmaceuticals, is pinning its hopes for foreign expansion in Asia on Lipovitan D, a sweet tonic drink that has no medicinal benefit. The very existence of a word like zoro-yaku should set off alarm bells for those who believe that Japan is dedicated to technological advancement. Medicine and biotechnology rank among the biggest growth industries in the world – and Japan is missing the boat. Computer software is another major business that Japan has neglected to develop. Japan imports leading-edge software from Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle; it exports computer games for children. Most surprisingly, Japan also failed to make the leap in chip manufacture, once an area of great strength. Manufacturers did not advance from DRAM production to microprocessors, and thus abandoned the high end of the industry to Intel. Korea and Taiwan, meanwhile, have moved in from below and are eating the Japanese alive at the lower end of the chip business. By 1999, all of Japan's major chip makers were reporting huge losses, while American and other Asian manufacturers had a bumper year. In the area of satellites and rockets, Japan's NASDA space agency, after spending billions of dollars to develop a «Japan-only» rocket, has suffered a humiliating series of failures, most notably in November 1999, when the launch of an H-2 rocket went so badly that ground control had to order it to self-destruct.