Operational Analysis

My friend and teacher, Fernando Flores, likes to tell his business clients the story of Pasteur and the dead cows. In the 1870s the French sheep and cattle industry was being decimated by anthrax and France’s economic position was in grave peril. At the time, the farmers were completely baffled by the mounting toll of dead cows and sheep; the cause, anthrax, had not yet been identified and named. Although a few researchers, including Pasteur, believed that a microbe might be the cause, the theory that diseases could be caused by microbes was so much at odds with conventional thinking that few physicians accepted it; Pasteur could not even persuade surgeons to wash their hands and use clean instruments. Finally, in 1882, Pasteur was challenged to “put up or shut up” by a French veterinarian. Pasteur vaccinated 25 of a group of 50 sheep with his anthrax vaccine; all 50 then received a lethal dose of anthrax. Every one of the vaccinated sheep survived without symptoms and every one of the unvaccinated sheep died within three days. Pasteur became a national hero. From that time forward, the medical profession came to believe in the germ theory of disease and in vaccinations to prevent disease. Within two years, anthrax was virtually eliminated from the French cattle and sheep industry.