The Message of Minamata
Harada Masazumi
For human beings, what were the meanings of the 20th century, which was called the gcentury of scienceh? One meaning, beginning with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and continuing through events such as the Lucky Dragon Number 5 incident caused by the hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, and the horrible nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl, is that humans opened the Pandorafs box of nuclear power. Advanced medical technologies such as genetic manipulation, including cloning, and organ transplants, became possible, and in just the hundred years of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of chemicals were developed or synthesized. In return for convenience and wealth, we have saturated ourselves with chemical substances.
Minamata disease is symbolic of this. It has often been said that Minamata disease is the archetype of pollution, but this is not only because of its scale and horror. The poisonings experienced by humans before Minamata disease were direct poisonings. For example, the earliest cases of methyl mercury poisoning were all cases of direct poisoning: first it was an occupational disease of factory workers, and then there were cases such as food poisoning through accidental consumption, of poisoning from medicines, and suicides. However, Minamata disease was methyl mercury poisoning of humans and animals who consumed fish and shellfish in which methyl mercury had accumulated after being discharged in factory wastewater and concentrated in the food chain. This was the first experience of such poisoning in human history. These special characteristics of the mechanism of its outbreak are the reason it came to be called not merely gmethyl mercury poisoning,h but gMinamata disease,h and are also the reason it can be called the archetype of pollution. Later, of course, in the case of the gsecond Minamata diseaseh that broke out in Niigata, there was another incident caused by pollution of the environment and the food chain. This was a concrete reminder that human beings exist as an inseparable part of the cycles of nature.
Furthermore, congenital Minamata disease suggested serious problems for our future. Prior to Minamata disease, we had thought that poisons did not pass through the placenta. However, in Minamata disease, the methyl mercury in the fish and shellfish eaten by the mother passed through the placenta to harm the brain of the fetus. This meant that the motherfs placenta could no longer protect the fetus. The outbreak of congenital Minamata disease is a warning message for the future of humanity. This was made clear by later threats to humanityfs very existence, such as the use of defoliants in Vietnam, as well as poisonings from pharmaceuticals, the pollution of food, and chemical substances (hormones) in the environment.
Walking through sites of environmental destruction throughout the world, it is very clear that the lessons of Minamata have not been put into practice. It is hard for me to find reasons to be hopeful about the future. There seem to be grounds only for pessimism, but everywhere, although they are in the minority, there are people who have not given up hope, and are dedicating their lives to continuing the struggle. I wish to fasten my hope for the future of mankind to people such as this. Minamata disease, like nuclear weapons, must be passed on to the 21st century as the 20th centuryfs greatest glegacy of failure.h
(Translated by Timothy S. George)
HARADA Masazumi
Born in Kagoshima in 1934, Msasazfoot_bl Harada graduated from Kumamoto University, Medical Department in 1964 and then studied the psychoneurology in postgraduate course of Kumamoto University,(Doctor of Medicine). In 1972, he became an associate professor of physical constitutional medicine laboratory of Kumamoto University. After retiring from Kumamoto University, he joined Kumamoto-gakuen University in 1999. He was awarded Japan Neuro-psychiatry Society Prize. He also won the 19 16th Osaragi Jiro Prize for his work "The World Projected from Minamata", the 31st Kumamoto Nichinichi-shinbun Literary Prize for "Minamata, Another Medical Record" in 1994, and the Global 500 Prize from United Nations Environment Program; UNEP in 1994. He is an author of many books about Minamata disease.
"Minamata Disease", "Minamata Disease is not Yesterday's Issue" ,"Studying Tour from Minamata Disease", "Red Sea of Minamata", "Chronic Minamata Disease-Disease Image" and others.
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