2024-02-01 21:35:48
All the presidents of the Fifth Republic insisted on the imperative of streamlining the administration and reducing the number of civil servants. Despite this leitmotif, no one has succeeded, whatever their political leaning. On the contrary, the administrative layer has thickened and the number of “sitting people” – as Rimbaud nicknamed them – has continued to increase.
In hospitals, strict administrative staff is 15% and all non-nursing staff is close to 40%. In all sectors, standards and procedures, often misinterpreted, increase the burden of work and degrade its quality. The harmfulness of a norm is as unimaginable as that of a medicine, since both were designed for our good. We prefer to add new standards or new drugs to correct the undesirable effects of the first.
I must give at least one example so that my criticism is not trivial, or even populist. The drop in birth rates which is now affecting our country has just provided me with one. Funny.
Let’s not confuse the terms: it is not our fertility that decreases, but our fecundity. Pollution and endocrine disruptors probably have a negative impact on fertility, but it is very small. As for the drop in fertility, it is mainly due to societal factors. Economic, ecological and geopolitical concerns can explain it, but all these causes boil down to one, which is the increasingly high age of first pregnancy. Although the ages of puberty and menopause may have varied over the centuries and environments, it appears that the age of peak fertility for women has never varied: it is always 24 years. And we too often forget or want to forget that sperm also deteriorates with age.
After these peaks, a couple’s fertility will decrease inexorably. PMA (medically assisted procreation) cannot compensate for this deficit, while increasing the risks for the unborn child. Despite its wide media coverage, the impact of PMA on the birth rate remains low (around 3% of births in France where it is widely practiced, as it is reimbursed up to the age of 43).
Faced with this observation, our president, also a critic of administrative plethora, nevertheless decided to create a fertility committee. I don’t know how many people, experts, advisors or civil servants will be on this committee, what its budget will be and the technology implemented, but it will certainly be a waste of money. Having no control over the macro-factors which generate the anxiety of fertilization, nor over the possible micro-factors which reduce fertility, all its members, following rhetorical detours and heavy expenses, will end up concluding that it It is better to get pregnant at 24 than at 43.
This is what I tried to explain in this very short column, without forcing the taxpayer to pay me, or even to read me.
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