Therac-25

Therac-25

Therac-25 was a computer-controlled radiation therapy system which was developed in 1982 (Leveson, 2017). The machine was developed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). This machine had several failures which lead to some major disasters. It was unfortunate that between 1985 and 1987 the machine was involved in massive radiation overdoses. Due to this massive radiation overdose, some people died, and others were left in bad conditions. The machine was involved in approximately six accidents between the two years. The failure of this system was due to some programming mistakes which were made during the development phase. The programming errors made the system to give radiation which was far much greater than expected.

The programming errors were brought about by the overconfidence of the engineers. The engineers needed to ensure that the machine was well tested before it was released. If there were proper testing, then the machine would not have shown such failures. The engineers also didn’t believe the claims from the end-users. If the engineers listened to these claims, then they could have retested the system and realize some bugs. The design phase also ha some issues and this led to the failure of the hardware part. If the design phase could be done accurately and keenly, then there would be no hardware failure.

References

Leveson, N. (2017). The Therac-25: 30 Years Later. Computer, 50(11), 8-11. doi: 10.1109/mc.2017.4041349