Radiation Therapy Mistakes Cost Lives

jmtpi recommends a long NY Times investigative report about how powerful medical linear accelerators have contributed to at least two deaths in the New York area. Although the mistakes were largely due to human error, buggy software also played a role. "...the records described 621 mistakes from 2001 to 2008... most were minor... The Times found that on 133 occasions, devices used to shape or modulate radiation beams... were left out, wrongly positioned, or otherwise misused. On 284 occasions, radiation missed all or part of its intended target or treated the wrong body part entirely. ... Another patient with stomach cancer was treated for prostate cancer. Fifty patients received radiation intended for someone else, including one brain cancer patient who received radiation intended for breast cancer."

Comments

Windows as usual.

[Ethanol-fueled]

TFA:

When the computer kept crashing, Ms. Kalach, the medical physicist, did not realize that her instructions for the collimator had not been saved, state records show. She proceeded as though the problem had been fixed...

...Shortly after 11 a.m., as Ms. Kalach was trying to save her work, the computer began seizing up, displaying an error message. The hospital would later say that similar system crashes "are not uncommon with the Varian software, and these issues have been communicated to Varian on numerous occasions."

Surprise, surprise. A little link-jumping through the manufacturer's products and job openings reveal .NET on Win32.

Or could somebody prove that the machines themselves run Linux or some kind of other embedded OS?

Re:Melodramatic?

[Dahan]

Wow, you're quite the douche. People do not experience a reduction in their quality of life with one kidney. All the things you mention do impact quality of life.

And yes, I'd certainly donate a kidney to a loved one if they needed it.