Data Death

At a General Hospital, a research project is being conducted in order to obtain more organs for transplantations. This takes place in an organ donation department, where people who are brain-dead, are kept artificially alive using advanced technology – AI. In this way, doctors can harvest organs from the deceased donors to help sick patients. Brainstem death is definitively determined through advanced artificial intelligence, and the new death criterion is called: Data Death. Erik, a young medical data engineer, works at this Organ Bank. One day, a young woman is admitted to the department with a fatal brain injury. After the system determines that she is Data-dead, her liver is prepared for transplantation to a recipient. The transplantation goes wrong, and Erik gradually senses that something inexplicable is at play, as if conventional knowledge is not sufficient, and he wonders if there is something about death that we cannot measure, something we do not know enough about!
Excerpt from the bookAround a hospital bed, which contained the body of a young woman with a nasty fracture of the skull, stood four people. Two were older, presumably her parents, and a young couple. The young woman, was dissolved in tears. What separated  the patient from life, was a brain which was slowly dying. And now it was no longer capable of maintaining vital body functions. Those were now partly controlled by Super Karl, the enormous hospital computer. The prognosis was that the brain would slowly but surely die, and that data-death would happen in about 2 hours and 20 minutes. What Erik had feared, actually happened. The young woman got up from the group and shouted: “No, it cannot be true. You can´t take her organs, then she will die… it just isn´t right, this!”
About the authorJarne Steen Nielsen (b. 1942) is a retired qualified electronics engineer. His interest is in natural science, and especially in the technological developments that follow from it. He believes that one should carefully consider the consequences before new technology is unleashed. He sums this up in the aphorism: to wonder is to live.