The Reality of Ghost in the Shell | 攻殻機動隊の現実
今見ている番組、NHKスペシャル「さまよえるがん患者」に家族が居ない老婆がターミナルケアができない病院に入院している。法律的に彼女を追い出すことができないが、受け取ってくれる病院が見つからない。そして、彼女は受け取ってくれる病院を待ちながら、静かになくなった。
最近、救急車で運ばれた人が次々病院に却下されて、そして番組で分かったのは、治療効果がないと判断されたがん患者は治療自体が否定される。
しかし、これは病院がひどいということではなく、日本の社会が高齢化しているから、資源が不足になってきた。
この番組を見ながら、「攻殻機動隊」というテレビアニメの第２シーズン「STAND ALONE COMPLEX Solid State Society」を思い出す。設定は日本社会の高齢化によって生きるために治療機械と常に繋がる必要のある老人が増加し、それは貴腐老人という。現在の技術で人間によるケアなしで治療を受けることができないが、もしそういう技術ができてしまったら未来はそのまま「攻殻機動隊」の世界になってしまう。
と思って上記の投稿を書いた。怖いですね。
I am right now watching an NHK special documentary “Cancer Refugees” about cancer victims who can’t find hospitals to take care of them. There is a terminally ill woman who has no relatives in the documentary who is accepted into a hospital that doesn’t have facilities to care the terminally ill, but the hospital is neither allowed to turn her away nor can they find another hospital to take her in. As she waits for someone to take her in, she passes quietly into the void.
Recently, there have been quite a few news stories about ambulances unable to find hospitals to take their patients. This documentary makes it clear that there are also cancer refugees in Japan, people who are turned away from hospitals when it is clear that their treatment is having no effect. Unable obtain treatment they move to another hospital, and so on and so on.
However, Japan’s hospitals are not as terrible as they seem. It’s simply that in a rapidly aging society, the health care infrastructure simply can’t keep up.
And all of this reminds me of an Sci-Fi anime called Ghost in the Shell. In the second season, S.A.C. Solid State Society, an aging Japanese takes center stage with terminally ill elderly people connected permanent to machines to stay alive at the center of the plot. Such technology does not exist right now, but it is quite imaginable to think that one day, in the apartments above us as we walk the streets, a lonely generation shut off from human contact could be lurking.
The possibilities of dehumanization offered by technology combined with the necessity of taking advantage of such technology…scary.