Funny incident in the OB/GYN

Back in the early seventies when Judy wrote the first version of the underlying software, when you deleted a record from the database, you’d say you “killed the record.” You’ll recall that at the time, clinical data was quite new, so you wouldn’t have thought twice to use the term “kill,” especially if you were a techie.

One day, Judy got a frantic call from the database administrator at the University of Wisconsin. He’d been walking down the hall with the Chair of the OB/GYN department and asked, “Did you kill Mary Smith?” The doctor said “Yes, I did.” Needless to say, all the pregnant women and OB/GYN patients in the hall got pretty upset.