Cyrill Vatomsky, Where All Politics Are Global

[Added some followups below] 

[Also, the story continues here. ] 

I have to admit, I do not understand  this. My first reaction did fit a common Internet acronym WTF.  So far only Forbes picked up on this subject among the Western media. Read for yourself and see if your reaction is different:

What Forbes' news wire reprint does not mention is that one of the explanations offered for this absurdity is
 

Here is more from the Kommersant article, once again only available on the Russian side of its web site (translating in a hurry, fairly loose, so be nice):



According to Kommersant Daily, the report claims that the supposed biological weapon is designed to be ethnically specific and will target health of Russian people including causing infertility among Russian women.

The Kommersant article also offers a litany of quotes from health care professionals concerned by recent developments and predicting dire consequences to clinical research in general and to public health in particular. Clinical research funding figures in Russia are incomparable to these in the West and inability to send samples for clinical tests, in cases of bone marrow transplants for example,  will result in simply put it, deaths.

My recent trip to Russia has elevated the word "obscurantism" (мракобесие) in my day to day vocabulary. There has been way too many noticeable examples there, mostly on personal level: weird ideas of Russian exclusivity, destiny, superiority mixed in with Feng Shui, pagan worship of medicinal stones - all fermented inside superficial Christian Orthodoxy. Superficial, because during the 80 years of the Communist rule, study of religion has been mostly substituted with shamanic soul searching and cultural psychosis of hodge-podge of obscurant beliefs.

To make sure, the idea of banning DNA shipments to prevent the West from developing an ethnic-specific anti-Russian weapon is preposterous. Nikolai Yankovsky from the Russian Institute of General Genetics told Echo of Moscow radio:


There got to be some other explanation. Maybe against my better judgment I flatly refuse to believe that such obscurantism can be the real cause. But I am still flabbergasted and can only offer several meager explanations in no particular order:

• It is after all a case of grandiose obscurantism on governmental level where paranoid bureaucrats are really exposing their convoluted world view.
• It is a beginning of a PR campaign to counter dismal health care and public health record of the current administration. After all the dreadful life expectancy figures can not be helpful and blaming the West has always worked like a charm in Russia.
  
• Somebody within Putin's coterie is eyeing medical field. I can't fathom how this ban could help improve the field but them vultures think in different terms.
• There is an internal struggle within Putin's coterie and someone with financial interests in medical field is being squeezed.
• The Federal Customs service is setting up a new racket - new opportunities for bribery or extortion.
• It is a trial balloon and The Kommersant Daily is in error - no such ban has been authorized.

Except for the last option, all other explanations are scary. I do not know what would bother me more - grandiose obscurantism of cosmic proportions or blatant disregard for human life for political or financial goals. Probably the former, since after spending one fifth of the last two and a half years in Russia dealing with my mother's cancer I am quite sanitized to customary insensitivity of the Russian establishment, medical or not.

I am sorry, but this is your second scary thought of the week.

A FOLLOWUP: The original Kommersant article is now available on their English language site here. 

MORE FOLLOWUPS:

Here are some quotes from Moscow Times:  

The Health and Social Development Ministry, meanwhile, said the new rules referred only to exports in large quantities.

"The system for the export of biological materials for sick individuals remains unchanged," the ministry said in a statement.

 Compare the above with this:

Federal Customs Service chief Andrei Belyaninov told Kommersant that all biological specimens had been banned from export.

"No foreign institution is able to destroy Russian's health more effectively than [Health and Social Development Minister] Mikhail Zurabov," Mentkevich said.

I am willing to add another bullet to the above list of possible explanations:

• gross incompetence.

The general idea was to try to cut into the smuggling of human organs business but the only way Federal Customs and Russian officialdom in general know how to react is to ban everything outright.

НИИИИЗЗЯЯЯЯ!