Cyrill Vatomsky, Where All Politics Are Global

Russian authorities all but admitted that the ban on export of all biological specimens from Russia was a flop. Well, not officially, of course.  Officialdoms do not make mistakes let alone flops. However, as the Kommersant Business Daily reported today,

Two weeks after the ban was initially imposed, leaving a legislative vacuum on the issue, the Ministry of Health and the FTS have issued new regulations governing biological specimens being sent out of the country. In essence, the document repeals the ban on the transport out of the country of three basic categories of biological specimens: those being used in clinical studies of new drugs, as part of an international scientific exchange, and for laboratory analysis as part of the treatment of patients in Russia.

Finally, after promises to resolve the issue within hours, Federal Customs Service and Ministry of Health pulled the ban, you think, right? Well, again, not exactly. Unlike the ban that had been immediately imposed without any explanations and any procedures, the repeal of the ban have not yet taken place. Just like it did on May 28^th the Federal Customs Service sent out directives this past Saturday.

"We found out on Saturday that the customs posts had received letters concerning the new regulations for exporting biological materials," said TNT's coordinator for clinical studies, Maria Astanina. "Now the customs officials should pass these rules along to the couriers. So far we haven't received them." Ms. Astanina also said that, in conjunction with possible changes in the permission-granting process, the company is currently not accepting any new orders for the transport of such materials abroad.

In the caption of the article, Kommersant offers a figure of 40 thousand Russians whose health was threatened by the ban. It would be just great to let these people off the bureaucratic hook, but the natural instinct for self preservation trumps patients once again.

Pharmaceutical companies expect to wait at least another week for the real removal of the ban. A representative of one such company told Kommersant that "some time will elapse while the decree is registered with the Ministry of Justice or until information is received indicating that the decree will go into force without registration."

Even when according to the same Kommersant article,

In essence, the regulations can be considered "new" only with regard to laboratory analyses "for patients' medical conditions."

Well, there is another "new" feature that had many people puzzled.

The only unanimous reaction to the document among experts concerned the rule that the permit must be in the name of the patient. According to Svetlana Zavidova, a former legal advisor for the Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, the rule violates patient confidentiality. Specifically, outside agencies - in this case, the customs offices where permits for the export of biological specimens are sent - will have access to patients' confidential medical histories.  

Once again, bureaucratic thinking meets reality. In search of a mild, saving face retreat without casualties among bureaucrats, at least some regulations needed to be imposed. What could possibly be easier and more benign then simply require a patient's name specified? What possible harm could it do? There is no need for it and there is already an existing system of coding that protects interests of patients, but would a saving face bureaucrat do any kind of research on consequences of his actions?

In no way am I suggesting that Russian bureaucrats are somehow different from bureaucrats elsewhere or here in the US. A planning department in some over bureaucratized county in California, like Santa Cruz can easily drag a business owner through several years of a grinding ordeal for no other reason then to show its power. Bureaucrats just have more power, more control over people's lives in Russia. They are more entrenched and are more likely to operate with impunity no matter the consequences of life and death to tens of thousands of people. Unfortunately, Russia is not moving away from the overreaching power of bureaucracy. The course of building "vertical power structures", the course of de facto nationalizations, the course of "managed democracy" its current president had embarked Russia onto leads to more day to day dependence of its citizens on bureaucracy.

The more people depend on the state the less likely they are to oppose it in any way. Across the globe in Santa Cruz, one of the most lefty cities in the US, people are less likely to vote its incompetent leaders out simply because government in one form or another is the largest city employer. Bureaucracy is the foundation of any lefty rule, its bread and butter, its milk and honey, its line, hook and sinker; it is the cage it forces people into. The only way to break the stranglehold bureaucracy has over lives is to privatise and deregulate as much as possible. In Maxist terms, to move away from state ownership of means of production to private ownership of means of production. And that is a very long road indeed.