Hello readers,
Source: Google Images
In this blog, I am going to tell a story which happened in past, but it's reason maybe fiction or real. Here I am starting a story with a question. For example, you are going to holiday trip or official trip to a island, and then suddenly hundred of boxes are dropped on the island beaches through aeroplane. If I asked you to guess "What in these boxes?", then you would think that would be food or medical supplies or first aid kit, or any other emergency supplies. Because we are new to a that island and mostly we don't how they lifestyle and daily activities be like.
What in these boxes?
But can you ever imagine that there are a thousands of cats in that boxes. Mostly our question is "What cats??Why Cats??". Some event are like imagine. Mostly of us asked the question," Why cats are packed in boxes?, Why they are air dropped from an aeroplane?".
Now this is not a figment of my imagination, but this actually happened and this operation was called as OPERATION CAT DROP. Yes, this incident happened on the island of Borneo in the 1950's. It's delivery by the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force in order of WHO (World Health Organization) a remote village in Sarawak, Borneo.
The big question Why?
Major reason for cat drop was outbreak of Malaria. In the year of 1950’s, there had been a large outbreak of malaria, that had been associated with mosquitos. In order to control the situation, World Health Organization (WHO) came to Borneo. And then it had to take up action, which is spraying of DDT. They had to cover entire island in a thick dust of DDT, which they felt it will kill the mosquitoes. The percentage of mosquitoes carrying the malaria - causing parasite fell from 35.6% to 1.6% during a 2-year period in Borneo in the 1950’s (NIH).
Now, DDT did kill the mosquitoes, but something else happened. That also led to perishing a large number of cats on the island. DDT not only killed the mosquitoes, but also killed a cats. And then what happened subsequently was reduction of number of cats, the population of rats suddenly went up. Now there was no one to kill the rats, and as result of rats population is growing at quickly. Now danger of Malaria outbreak was suddenly replaced by the outbreak of dangerous risk of Plague. Therefore, in order to bring this risk under control, they need to control the population of rats by cats had to be air dropped. This is where system design kicks into full force, see the image below.
Source: Google Images
What do you do now?
Now instead of outbreak of malaria the country is now has been infected by the plague. Which make a situation worth?. Simple question if you are in that situation "What do you do control the situation?"For example,
1. Attempt to reverse the system by bringing back cats.2. Bring back the mosquitoes.
3. Place rat traps around the country.
4. Do nothing, let the ecological system do its magic.
In Closing...
The first law of thermodynamics is that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it changes from one form to another. The third law of physics states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. These two laws are some of the earliest works on systems thinking.This are interesting stories, but While the concept of systems thinking has existed for more than hundreds or thousands of years, it is still largely unused in business. For this post I am sharing an example of system thinking gone wrong.
If you need to read more, then click here
Read this article:- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636426/
Page 6 of the WHO newsletter from June 2005
