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December 2 – At the University of Utah, 61-year-old retired dentist Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart; he lives for 112 days with the device.
Janet Balaskas establishes and names the active birth movement.
The Therac-25, a computerised model of radiotherapy device for cancer treatment, enters production. Design faults, including race conditionss and poorly documented error reporting in its software, and lack of hardware interlocks, lead to six reported incidents of Therac-25 units administering excessive radiation doses, injuring patients and causing multiple deaths.