Question
Assume the family of one of the victims is suing the hospital where the machine was used, the manufacturer of the machine (AECL) and the programmer who wrote the Therac-25 software.
In this assignment, you will debate, draw conclusions and assign levels of responsibility or liability to each of the parties being sued.
Source:
Baase, Sara. A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computing Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2013. Print.
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Discussion Thread: Therac-25Part One
The Programmer is Responsible
The programmer is responsible for the malfunctioning Therac-25 software. First, the bug that had caused the problems was an easy bug to fix. The programmer should have used a better system to check the system after each use. By setting the variable to 0, instead of a fixed variable, the computer was set to ready even if “it was not ready.” This simple mistake gave the false impression that the machine was safe....