Last month Yutaka Hasegawa, the freelance announcer who hosted the TV Osaka program "News Real Friday," caused a stir with a personal blog post criticizing people who receive dialysis treatments.
The regular theme of Hasegawa's blog is how certain forces are "destroying Japan," and the original title of the post in question stated that the current social security system was doing just that because so many people were undergoing dialysis, a notoriously expensive kidney disease treatment. These patients had caused their own illnesses, Hasegawa claimed, due to lifestyle choices, and so they should just be allowed to die rather than bankrupt Japan. Hasegawa got a bit carried away with his rhetoric, and simply said, "If they can't afford (dialysis) and cry, just kill them!"
A number of groups, including the Japan Association of Kidney Disease Patients, protested loudly, and TV Osaka decided to drop Hasegawa from "News Real Friday," even though the announcer later regretted his choice of words. Nevertheless, a subsequent article in the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho asserted that Hasegawa did have a point.
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