OtherHigh
Zoetis Vetscan Imagyst Allegedly Misclassified Dog's Cancerous Tumor, Leading to Second Surgery and Death
- Occurred
- Oct 1, 2025
- Published
- Jul 30, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
In October 2025, Columbia Veterinary Hospital in The Dalles, Oregon reportedly used Zoetis's Vetscan Imagyst AI to analyze a rapidly growing neck mass in an 11-year-old Belgian Tervuren. The system allegedly classified the mass as inflammatory, while a later biopsy found aggressive cancer. The hospital alleges the first surgery failed to remove all cancer, requiring a second operation; the dog died from complications. Zoetis allegedly later apologized and said similar incidents had occurred.
Developers
- Zoetis
- AI diagnostic system developers
Deployers
- Veterinarians
- Columbia Veterinary Hospital (The Dalles, Oregon)
- AI diagnostic system deployers
Harmed parties
- Unnamed 11-year-old Belgian Tervuren
- Pets
- Pet owners
- Epistemic integrity
- Dogs
- Animal life
Classification
Category confidence: 80%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI misclassification led to medical error and death, but veterinary AI is not standard LLM/robotics category.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8