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At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

(www.nytimes.com)
628 points xbryanx | 1 comments | 11 Jul 25 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.253s | source
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SCdF ◴[11 Jul 25 14:25 UTC] No.44532508[source]▶
Effectively tortured to death.

One of the things that frustrates me with how ethics is taught in computer science is that we use examples like Therac 25, and people listen in horror, then their takeaway is frequently "well thank god I don't work on medical equipment".

The fact that it's medical equipment is a distraction. All software can cause harm to others. All of it. You need to care about all of it.

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1. gblargg ◴[11 Jul 25 16:47 UTC] No.44534316[source]▶
Therac 25 is exactly what I thought of when reading this story. The software didn't have direct hardware control to kill patients with radiation, but it still resulted in thousands of victims.