I’m not sure whether this is a little known fact, but I’ve always found it disturbing.

You know when you’re buying medicine, sometimes toiletries, and other things like that, and you find those annoying little seals?

Some of you might know why these exist. Some might not.

In 1982, a 12-year-old Mary Kellerman took some Extra-Strength Tylenol and died not long afterwards.

Adam Janus, brother Stanley, and sister-in-law Theresa all died after taking some Tylenol capsules.

Not long afterwards, Mary McFarland, Paula Prince, and Mary Reiner all died after taking the same brand capsules.

All were from within the Chicago metropolitan area.

After the 7th person died, it was realised where the connection lay – each had ingested Tylenol capsules.

Tests on the bottles the capsules revealed an alarming fact:

The capsules

had been dosed with potassium cyanide!

Police were quickly able to rule out manufacturers as a source. They weren’t being tampered with there. They theorized that the source was from the shops and drug stores themselves.

They suspected that somebody had procured the capsules, added the cyanide to each, and then resealed, and methodically replaced the containers back on the store shelves.

The mildly disturbing fact?

The police don’t know who did it.

They were able to identify numerous suspects, including someone who had carried out poisoning rampages like this, an individual who had sent a ransom letter demanding $1m to Johnson & Johnson, and others. But no direct ties were ever found.

Nobody has been held directly accountable for this crime.

Alongside the bottles they know were responsible for the deaths, authorities found 3 additional bottles that had been contaminated.

I just find it so disturbing that someone can commit such a heinous crime, and still be walking around like a normal person.

The fact that the capsules could be opened, tampered with and resealed led to the abolition of pellet-filled capsules as a medication mode

Obviously could not laugh at it in the Court Room ! -:)

However this was many years ago when I was called on to Jury Service. had been to this Crown Court ( The higher of the two initial Criminal Courts in England and Wales [note that Scotland has its own laws and procedures] ) .

We had been sworn in and the case was about to start when the Court Orderly told us that there had been a change of plea that the Court had accepted, so as such there was nothing to “Consider”, but as we had been sworn in had to at least be in session, and hear the Charges against the man read out to the Court.

The hearing was essentially a Sentencing hearing and for the Judge to consider the facts of this and past cases. (I appeared that this man had quite a history from the age of about 14 onwards!) .

The Defence Barrister had stood up, the Police having given their details and repeating the causation of the Charges. The Judge asked the Defending Barrister, where there were any mitiating circumstances that that Judge should take in to consideration.

The Defence Barrister stated that : “ my client, although having a troubled history, has show good will and has not been arrested for any maters or brought about sentence for over four years”.

The Judge, who had been listening to this an making his notes for consideration, looked up at the Defending Barrister and just quietly said: “ Yes. Mr …… but I would remind you that you client was indeed in Custody for 20 months of those four years ! “

The Barrister tried to wriggle around with mitigating circumstances, which unsurprisingly the Judge swept aside, and the Defendant received a further custodial sentence.

All the Jurors we trying to keep straight faces until the now sentenced party was taken to point of detention, and the Judge had left the Court Room and we were discharged by the Usher.

Just one of thise unforgettable moments-:)

I knew one inmate in maximum security. This guy never gave me trouble. Typically, one hour of rec, three trays a day, one shower please and thank you was about the summation of our existence. I remember having a few random conversations with him like wishing him a Merry Christmas or us talking about the Branch Davidians.

So imagine my surprise when one day walking by his cell I see a cat hanging out in the cell with him.

The unit had a small army of cats, probably more cats than officers if we counted. They kept the rodent population down, supposedly. However I would see them usually hanging out begging by the kitchen or in the grassy area.

I spent some time trying to figure out how a cat got into the cell. The window was covered in black metal mesh. Up through the toilet maybe?

As I would find out, the inmate trustees who were supposed to be cleaning the pods, but were out doing anything but working could be paid to put a kitten in a bag and pass it to a fellow inmate.

I’m not sure how many soups were worth a kitten and the exchange ratio never made itself apparent to me. Technically there were no rules against inmates having pets. The only thing I could possibly think of was a traffic and trading charge which wouldn’t hold water because I didn’t see it happen. Not that I was interested in writing up the inmate. I was happy for him.

The inmate soon regretted his decision. The commissary didn’t sell kitty litter. I recommended that he tear up old bags or pay a trustee to bring him grass. Also, cat food was not on the commissary list. My inmate bought tuna which was about as close as you could get. He told me that he tried feeding the kitten scrambled eggs describing it as “… the worst decision of my life. That thing was blowing up my cell.”

At a loss, the inmate turned in the kitten to a female officer who took it home. The cat became known as “Contra” (as in contraband). I talked to that coworker about it and Contra couldn’t seem to adjust to life in the free world. Contra was obsessed with sleeping in brown bags and had a bad habit of shanking, correction clawing the other members of the family.

“Lookout boss.”

It’s only been about the last 15 years or so that I’ve discovered how wonderful life is when you live alone. I grew up with lots of friends all through school. My husband and I had combined our friends and our life was full of friends and children. My days were nonstop from the time my feet hit the floor in the morning. Our lives were hectic, busy and we enjoyed it that way.

Life really can change in a second, without warning. When our lives changed drastically when my husband died in an accident, I withdrew from everyone. It was not enjoyable. I didn’t want to be around anyone. That kind of alone was not enjoyable and it wasn’t healthy either.

Life goes on and I was surrounded with lots of new friends. Then the kids moved on to start their lives and families. I also started a new relationship that ended ugly 10 years later. I dated but nothing got serious. But I just wanted someone around. I didn’t want yo be alone. That isn’t healthy either. After several abusive relationships I made some major changes in my life. I moved several hundred miles away from everyone and everything I knew. I started my own business. I had to work a lot to get my business making money. I had no time to get out and meet people. About 3 years later I was able to relax. My business was doing so much better than I dreamed it do. I now had time to go meet new friends. I had met some people in the neighborhood. Ladies I’d walk with in mornings and evenings. I didn’t feel the need to hang out at tge bar or spending the weekends at tge veach or antique shopping or doing of the things I had always done. I really wanted to be at home, working in the garden, decorating a room, or just piddling around the house. I was enjoying spending time with just me. It was something g I’d never done before.

I have met a lot of people in my town because of my business. I socialize all day at work. Then I go home and I spend the rest of the day doing what I want. I date but I don’t want anything serious. A good long time friend will visit each month for several days. I enjoy the visit. I also enjoy it when the cost is over and I can be alone.

When I look back on my life I can see how my interests, wants and needs changed every 5 years or so. What I wanted at 20 wasn’t what I wanted at 25 and do on. So, for right now I’m enjoy my life alone. I don’t know what I’ll be enjoying in 5 years but for today in happy with my life right now.

I actually had this situation a number of years ago. TL;DR – I decided that the humanitarian route was best.

This long-time employee was a favorite of our customers, as well as her colleagues. Unfortunately, the “big C” came for her far sooner than she deserved. I noticed a decline in performance well before she broke the news of her diagnosis. I knew that I had to do something, as she had such a critical “linchpin” role in our operations. But I felt that simply jettisoning her was completely unfair…and more than a bit heartless.

She used all of her PTO and FMLA for the year or so where she was fighting it off. I simply distributed what part of her role that I could to other people during the times she was out. She improved for a little while…but it came back stronger, and it was clear she was about out of options.

As a senior manager, I never use my PTO. Always something else to be done, you know? *shrug* So, I had my full yearly allocation, except for 8 hours I’d taken to have a root canal. I quietly arranged to give her my personal bank of PTO during the summer, so she could have that time with her family (particularly the younger relatives, who were all out of school) while still being paid. I didn’t tell anyone about it, including her, but word leaked.

She resigned around mid-summer, and passed away three weeks later. Her husband told me at the funeral that she had found out how she got her extra time off from HR, and made it known what I did before she passed.

Unintentionally, I made a great organizational investment. To this day, we have benefited from the good will generated from that decision. People know when you’re talking the talk…and they know when you’re walking the walk. Taking care of a long-time employee with a terminal illness is a great way to walk the walk. And I can’t imagine what might have happened if I had made a different choice. Besides, even if you don’t get the organizational benefit, it’s always the right time to do the right thing.

Where China is ahead? China’s nuclear safety record is surprisingly very good. Especially when compared to other major industrial countries with nuclear power plants in operation.

China has had to deal with some major regulatory lapses in food safety and medicines in the past, but when it comes to nuclear safety, they might just have the best record on the planet if not one of the top 3, especially when the scale and scope of their nuclear energy systems are taken into account (46 reactors and increasing).

The Chinese nuclear operators have repeatedly gotten very high grades from international agencies on their safety precautions. Nuclear safety related incidents are graded from Level 1 to Level 7 (Level 7 being the worst like Chernobyl and Fukushima). The Chinese have never had an incident beyond Level 1.

A lot of this is because China’s nuclear safety is very openly discussed by Chinese nuclear engineers in technical journals within the country. Because of this openness and lack of censorship, several articles were published by Chinese engineers detailing that the primary issue with Chinese nuclear powerplants were due to substandard technical equipment or non standard equipment coming from equipment providers in China. This led to a 2016 scandal (which was reported openly in the Chinese press) about valves being supplied to nuclear powerplants that resulted in around a dozen nuclear equipment providers to publicly sign confessions to crimes regarding providing false information and provision of defective equipment.

The details of the scandals were published alongside signatures and seals from CPC officials and the CEOs of the equipment providers in the China Energy Report.

If you guys are familiar with the Chernobyl series, one of the big themes regarding the disaster was the secrecy and lack of information around the nuclear reactor designs and operations. Which prevented faults from being exposed.

If we were to speculate why China has such a good safety record, why the regulations are so good in nuclear safety and why safety issues can be discussed in such a transparent manner: It’s probably because of how deeply unsettled and impacted Chinese leaders were by the Fukushima incident in neighboring Japan.

The Fukushima incident spurred a pretty significant internal overhaul of China’s nuclear safety even though no disaster or safety incident had occurred yet. Reactor construction was put on hold, a lot of safety laws were implemented and the safety law was rapidly published. Nearly a thousand people were added to the national nuclear safety regulatory authority. Actually, the national nuclear safety regulatory authority is pretty special in China because apparently if you choose to go work with them, you can get residence permits (Huko) which are a big deal in China. And that was how they were able to bump up their recruitment despite the somewhat lower salary the organization pays compared to others.

And China’s excellent nuclear safety record has a benefit for the rest of the world as well. Pakistan has also had 0 nuclear safety incidents beyond Level 1 regarding their Chinese built powerplants, partly because Pakistani nuclear plant operators adopted the safety practices and procedures of their Chinese counterparts who they got these plants from in the first place. Pakistani nuclear operators also get training from Chinese operators which helps to further spread these safe nuclear plant practices to developing countries.

I think one side benefit of China exporting reactors abroad is, is that their safety record follows them. So a lot of developing countries can make the switch to safe, non-polluting nuclear energy by getting reactors from China and at the same time getting some pretty high quality training and safety procedures from them in the progress. Assuming of course, they continue to follow these safety procedures in an updated and consistent manner over the years. And also pair it with the same open, frank discussion on the current state of nuclear safety in the country, the same way the Chinese nuclear engineer community does.

Academic sources if you want to go more in-depth on this topic: Jane Nakano and Thomas Rawski

What China still lags in?

Probably the soft infrastructure of a country: Policies.

I’ll give two examples:

1. Health care policies and health insurance management
2. Horizontal cooperative policies in large engineering organizations.

1. Health care policies and health insurance management

China is at that point in their development where they have pretty much mastered hard infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, powerplants).

But soft infrastructure, like your health care policies are an area where the government is still trying to figure out how to make systems work. The newer hospitals in China, disease prevention, early detection and a lot of other components of China’s health care system are pretty first class and comparable to the best systems in the world.

The issue comes around questions of policy: What should we expect the patient to pay for? What should the government pay for? How do we optimize drug prices to balance between innovative research and affordability? How can hospitals balance their budgets without requiring government bail outs? How do we balance between breadth and depth of medical coverage?

While China’s economy and spending power has increased manifold, in terms of advances in health care coverage, the country is actually going down in terms of health care advancement compared to the past and the last major increase in life expectancy and quality of health care was achieved under Mao’s barefoot doctor program.

The government is trying to figure things out. They rolled out universal health care for China, which was no small feat. It focusses on breadth rather than depth (give some limited health care insurance to everyone instead of give health insurance that covers everything to some people). Hospitals are allowed to mark up drugs 15% to make profits off of them.

But the core issue remains that health insurance and managing health insurance is something that’s been in China for only 20 years and is new to the country and it’s managers. So we have the somewhat strange situation where China’s health care system is well funded, has excellent doctors and supporting staff, has hospitals equipped with the latest technology.

But the health care system is in deep trouble because the managerial skill needed to keep it running through pricing optimization, risk management, risk pooling, health insurance management, premium setting and healthcare policy expertise is very badly lacking. And could lead to massive financial problems in the future if the policy isn’t ironed out correctly.

The second example I’ll give is of horizontal management.

This plays a big part in engineering firms in China that are trying to achieve the Chinese government’s goals of developing next gen technologies in China indigenously.

A good example here is COMAC, which has been trying to get into the passenger aircraft game to compete with Boeing and Airbus, primarily with their first aircraft the C919.

COMAC is a good example of a Chinese SOE that still has a large leftover legacy from how Soviet State enterprises were organized. It is extremely top down and while it can excel in vertical management, it struggles when it comes to horizontal management.

Horizontal management refers to how the different departments and units within companies are supposed to integrate with each other and synchronize their activities. Within engineering firms, this is something that System Engineers, Project Managers and Systems Integration Managers are supposed to enable. A complex engineering system like a submarine, a satellite or a aircraft cannot be created from scratch in an engineering organization where you have 0 horizontal integration and management and your departments fail to coordinate with each other when designing and developing components that are supposed to go in the same end product.

COMAC’s C919 had a very trouble development history precisely because COMAC is still very much organized and managed by state employees whose perspective is still shaped by vertical management principles of large Soviet organizations. And suffers from major issues in internal integration of different department efforts.

Which is why the Chinese government is making an enormous push to attract not just technical experts and engineers from abroad, but also the business managers who specialize in this stuff and enable it to happen.

I think this is why a lot of Asian parents need to stop pushing the “Doctor or Engineer” choice on their kids. There’s enormous demand in China at the moment for managers who are experts in health care policies, insurance management etc. from the first example. And engineering managers, project managers and other enablers of horizontal integration in the second example.

Both of these fields require people with imagination, flexibility, creativity and good communication skills.

The thing is, it isn’t like China has failed at this: Ali Baba has superb internal horizontal integration. There’s a joke that Ali Baba and Tencent are better positioned to make China’s next passenger aircraft or aircraft carrier than Chinese SOEs because being private sector entities they have superbly synchronized their internal alignments and developed seamless integration between all their different divisions and departments.

And we have to remember that this is the first time the government is making a move in these sectors where they will have to take time to build up experience.

And I think the Chinese government should consider filling this deficiency in their current internal economy and industrial base by either continuing to get top managerial talent from abroad, nurturing their own management talent or give more space to private sector entities in this fields that don’t suffer from the internal management issues that the Chinese SOEs struggle with.

Source used:

• Jane Nakano, Senior Fellow in CSIS Energy and National Security Program
• Loren Brandt (University of Toronto)
• Thomas Rawski (University of Pittsburgh)