Therac-25

The Therac-25 machine was a third-generation machine produced by the company AECL which specialized in manufacturing machines which provided radiation therapy to cancer patients. This machine accomplished this by emitting a beam of electrons or x-rays to the cancerous area. This amount of radiation interferes with the cancerous tissue’s ability to grow by disabling the genetic material in the cell. However, since cancerous cells are not the only cells in the body that grow very quickly, skin and hair cells may also become affected by this radiation by causing the hair to fall out and leave lesions on the skin. Fortunately, these cells are usually able to make a full recovery a while after the radiation treatment is ended. AECL improved upon the Therac-25’s predecessors, Therac-6 and…

is a double edged weapon and this was the case in the therac-25 as its purpose was to treat patients, but as a result of the misuse of computer technology it harmed six innocent people. The problem with the design of the machine was that it was mainly controlled by its software and not its hardware. The programmer did not take into consideration that he was designing a machine that emits dangerous types of radiation that can be life threatening if they are not well controlled. One of the main…

Track 2 (“Baby Be Mine”): This song starts with percussion and synthesizer sound effects. The lyrics begin at 0:20. I noticed that the percussion highlighted the second and fourth beats of the measure. The song was a legato sounding pop song that sounded like some of the songs on the top 40 radio stations. Background singers entered at about 0:58; they shocked me because I did not expect something like that in this song. About that time there was an interesting hollow sound that I enjoyed. I was…

under his command. Yet the most poignant aspect of Mitchell’s legacy first materialized five years after his death, on December 7th, 1941. Combined naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor at 7:55 A.M., sinking twenty-one ships, destroying nearly two hundred aircraft, and killing 2,400 American servicemen. Mitchell’s original prediction was off by twenty-five minutes. Ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese annihilated…

from doctors not using the machines properly, Chen believes. “You get these people who aren’t very good, who aren’t being watched over,” Chen said. “The robot doesn’t make a bad surgeon a good surgeon. The robot actually enhances what you can do. But if you’re a bad surgeon, you’re still going to be a bad surgeon with a robot.” Another safety-critical system is a radiation therapy for curing cancer, called Therac-25. However, the deaths it caused accelerated the lives it saved. It was a…

When looking at the patriot missile software failure, I have come to the conclusion the benefits of technology were not worth the cost. The army claimed that using this tactic was 95% effective, when in all actuality it was only about 9% effective. This is a very large difference. There were about 88 scud missiles fired during the gulf war. Only about 8 of them would have been taken down by a patriot missile. That means about 80 scud missiles had the opportunity or did successfully take out a…

When radiation misadministrations are caught early, subsequent treatment doses can be adjusted so that the patient avoids receiving an under- or overdose. A severe misadministration may result in radiation necrosis to vital organs/structures and can be fatal. A highly publicized case of radiation misadministration resulting in a fatality occurred in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2005, in which a young patient, Lisa Norris, received a 58% higher dose than ordered to her craniospinal area. An autopsy…