alt Hacker NewsExactly what I thought as soon as I learned the name.
It's like, man, how to kill a product?
No pun intended.
It could even work? But you put yourself behind such a poorly placed 8 ball when you do these things. Even among researchers, people are a little superstitious about stuff like this. It's always in the back of everyone's mind.
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I doubt any of that is valid. Therac-25 happened 44 years ago, that's a very long time, and many people involved in cancer research today weren't even alive when it happened.
"Theryq" and "Therac" are not quite the same either. The word "therapy" and derivatives of it using "thera" are still used widely across the medical industry.
So I'm not really sure why anyone here is making a big deal about the name of the company being "Theryq".
> It's like, man, how to kill a product?
"This name makes me uncomfortable. I think I'd rather die of cancer."
> Even among researchers, people are a little superstitious about stuff like this.
Being superstitious is not common in the medical treatment world, where weird product names are common.
A doctor isn’t going to include the device’s brand name in their decision process for treating a cancer patient.
The Therac-25 case study is noted in the medical world but not to the same extent as in engineering. The case was a tragedy of bad engineering, but the doctors involved in directing the treatments were not at fault for the radiation over exposures.