2. Therac-22 accidentally kills three in Virginia

The whole world cannot be tech savvy, but most of us have to use technology everyday for some reason or the other. So, we master how to run our gadgets without getting into the nitty gritty of the technology underlying it. But little did we know that this ignorance could have serious repercussions.

The disaster:

During the 1980’s there was a machine Therac-25 which was used to give chemotherapy for cancer patients. Hardware during the 80’s was not very advanced which caused a lot of malfunctioning. Now imagine if this machine which shoots radiation into the patient’s body malfunctions. The results could very well be death.

Exactly that happened and three patients lost their lives because they were exposed to 100 times the radiation that was required.

The tiny glitch: ignoring the error messages.

The therac-5 was not a very advanced hardware but its software was good enough so every time something went wrong with the machine it notified the operator by sending error messages. Only the operator had the habit of ignoring the error messages and going ahead with the treatment.

This ignorance caused three painful deaths. Shocking, isn’t it?