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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page review of the case history of this X-ray delivery machine. A malfunction resulted in the loss of three lives and the serious endangerment of others. This paper explores the varying level of control that computer programming allows between operator and machine. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: AM2_PPcmpTherac25.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
many aspects of our lives. They have infiltrated everything from how our grocery bill is calculated to how we assess information. Even our health is now often at
the mercy of computers. The Therac-25 is just one example of the many ways computers are used in medicine. Invented, in the 1980s, this device is a radiation
therapy machine that was involved in at least six cases where patients received massive overdoses of radiation. The consequence of this was death for three of those patients.
The Therac-25 case study presents numerous questions in regard to the inherent dangers of software controlled systems that have the potential to
adversely impact human health. The contention can be made, in fact, that the level of computer control that was implemented in the Therac-25 system was inappropriate. That level
of computer control ultimately, in fact, jeapordized lives. The Therac-25 device could have worked more efficiently and more safely if more of a safety net had been built in
to lessen the possibility that human operators would take the easy way out when presented with operational decisions. One aspect of this safety net should have been provisions that
insured the computer would detect when a high-powered electron beam was chosen by a human operator in a situation where a low powered beam would have been more appropriate.
By implementing better-thought-out safeguards the accidents involving the over radiation of those six patents could have likely been prevented.
Discussion The roots of the problems resulting from the utilization of the Therac-25 system can be traced all the
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