Curt, You might wish to check out Nancy Levison's book, Safeware: System Safety and Computers
She is one of the primer authorities on software safety in the country, if not the world. She addresses the Therac 25 incident in her book, not necessarily from an ethical point of view but after checking out the book you might want to contact her personally. I have found her to be most approachable and I'm sure that she would be willing to discuss this with you. Her name is mentioned in the following technical report (CMU/SEI-93-TR-13) Software Product Liability, by Jody Armor and Watts S. Humphrey of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. See chapter 9, page 17, Improvement Opportunities. (http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/93.reports/pdf/tr13.93.pdf) Here is a short bio of her to help you determine if it might be worthwhile contacting her. Nancy Leveson is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and also Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Prof. Leveson conducts research on the topics of system safety, software safety, software and system engineering, and human-computer interaction. In 1999, she received the ACM Allen Newell Award for outstanding computer science research and in 1995 the AIAA Information Systems Award for "developing the field of software safety and for promoting responsible software and system engineering practices where life and property are at stake." In 2005 she received the ACM Sigsoft Outstanding Research Award. She has published over 200 research papers and is author of a book, "Safeware: System Safety and Computers" published by Addison-Wesley. She consults extensively in many industries on the ways to prevent accidents. Prof. Leveson will present a tutorial titled "STAMP and STPA: A New Approach to System Safety for Complex, High-Tech Systems" on Monday, 25 August 2008, 8am to 2:30pm at the 26th International System Safety Conference to be held in Vancouver, Canada. (http://www.system-safety.org/~issc2008/) (This is not a paid political endorsement. I have just worked with her a couple of times and know her capabilities and willingness to assist.) You might also check out another speaker at this conference, Dr. Richard Cook. "Dr. Richard Cook is a physician, educator, and researcher at the University of Chicago . His current research interests include the study of human error, the role of technology in human expert performance, and patient safety. Dr. Cook's most often cited publications are "Gaps in the continuity of patient care and progress in patient safety", "Operating at the Sharp End: The complexity of human error", "Adapting to New Technology in the Operating Room", and the report "A Tale of Two Stories: Contrasting Views of Patient Safety." Oscarr Overton Product Safety "Bender, Curtis" <Curtis.Bender@TE NNANTCO.com> To Sent by: <emc-p...@ieee.org> emc-p...@ieee.org cc Subject 05/07/2008 10:57 Ethics grad work Therac-25 PM Greetings fellow IEEE PS forum members. I am a Grad student writing an ethics paper on the Therac-25 radiation machine. http://www.computingcases.org/case_materials/therac/therac_case_intro.html My paper is focusing on the ethical situation from the manufacturer's point of view and hypothetically what they should or could have done differently to solve the issue if I was their "consultant." Primarily I am interested in the ISO/IEC or international safety standards for software programming of industrial equipment or medical devices. Not necessarily to reference them but to understand the scope and to realize what the manufacturer needed/needs to do. This would also hypothetically be presented to the business management team that "contracted" me. I am a little curious too as to what extent this event has taken the existing industry. I have read that the standards have "added unnecessary time to an already laborious process." I look forward, as always, to your comments. Best regards, Curt Bender Curtis BenderTennant companycurtis.ben...@tennantco.com - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to emc-p...@ieee.org Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas emcp...@ptcnh.net Mike Cantwell mcantw...@ieee.org For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org David Heald: emc-p...@daveheald.com All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc