Therac-25 Disaster
Ethical Theories
How it saved lives
How it destroyed lives
Kantianism
Act Utilitarianism
Rule Utilitarianism
Do not break rules put in place by society. Therac-25 breaks this ethics rule.
Can I rationally will that everyone act as I propose to act? In other words If I build this machine, is it ok for other people to build a similar machine if I knew there were flaws in its programming?
Belief that an action becomes morally right when it produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Background
The program that was developed for the Therac-25 was designed by a single individual who lacked formal training.
The program itself was written in assembly language, a low level language, but there were not many better options at the time.
Assembly language was used due to the fact that the Therac devices required a high level of speed when preforming functions.
Most of the software within Therac-25 came from Therac-20 which was believed to be error free.
The Therac-20 did fail but had safeguards in place to insure no injuries occurred. When the software was transferred from the Therac-20 to the Therac-25 the safeguard software was omitted leaving the Therac-25 unprotected should it fail.
Because of the lack of safeguards the Therac-25 device caused multiple injuries and several deaths.
Does creating the machine respect the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for my own purposes?
Does the machine cause any prohibited actions included in Kantianism?
Theft
Lying
Murder
Yes
Yes
No
Yes and no, this project was rushed for financial reasons knowing the safeguards were not in place, but the purpose of the machine was to save lives.
No, it is not ok to build this machine whiteout proper safeguards in place
Based on the available evidence, is it ok to build this machine knowing it can kill people but save more lives than it will harm which would benefit the greater good.
According to Kants rules, Therac-25 would not be acceptable to build and use
Certain patients would be exposed to a high exposure of radiation killing them within weeks to months after the visit.
Critical sections in the software are not protected and the hardware interacts were removed which were a safety backup for the radiation amount resulting in over exposure to patients.
Do not knowingly kill patients due to the software failing during an operation.
The machine should have been delayed putting lives before money and not rushing the project.
Do not knowingly cause others harm due to the software failing during an operation.
The Therac-25 was actually one of several devices designed to help cancer patients, the previous designs had worked well.
The Therac-25, like other Therac devices, used X-ray beams to target cancer cells.
If we look at Act Utilitarian, this machine is ethically acceptable to build for one main reason.
This machine will ultimately save more lives than it will harm due to the fact that the majority of people that used the machine ended up being healed instead of dying in the later weeks.
It had 2 main functions.
The x-ray mode used a high current electron mode with a filter to target the cancer cells
The electron mode would scan the field for targets
In the high electron mode it would move the filter out of the way if it had no target resulting in intense overexposure to the patient.