The Nation - News from June 22, 1986

A computer malfunction apparently triggered excessive radiation doses to two cancer patients in Tyler, Tex., earlier this year, causing the death of one man, officials said. Officials in Georgia said an identical machine unleashed a huge radiation dose in 1985 on a patient, causing nerve damage. In Austin, a Texas Bureau of Radiation Control investigator said the East Texas Cancer Center incidents came after the operator entered a wrong command into the linear accelerator and then corrected it. Officials said the incident at the Kennestone Regional Oncology Center in Marietta, Ga., involved “an unforeseen sequence of computer commands.”