2 ms·
Reminds me of an old Baseline Magazine cover story about how poor software can kill. The poster child? Software that calculated radiation doses for cancer patie
by alanh 16y ago
Reminds me of an old Baseline Magazine cover story about how poor software can kill. The poster child? Software that calculated radiation doses for cancer patients which produced results off by ~1000% when the lead pads were entered counter-clockwise instead of clockwise (!). It caused dozens of deaths in Panama.
The unforgettable cover photo was a dead body under a white sheet, with a toe tag.
(Ironically, it seems this article was drastically truncated during a website migration: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/Why-Software-Quality-Matters/ http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/Why-Softwa...)
- callahad 16y agoHaven't heard of that particular case, but the Therac-25 caused six people to receive 100 times the amount of radiation intended, killing three of them. There were a number of issues, many UI-related, but what I found most interesting was that the prior Therac machines, which ran the same software, had hardware interlocks that allowed them to operate safely, masking software bugs. When the hardware interlocks were removed in the Therac-25, the buggy software was able to make the machine misbehave dangerously. Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
- extension 16y agoTherac-25 is the most famous incident, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. This is still happening, and it happens a lot. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html