Computers at the River Styx

According to a brief item in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly, researchers from the National Institutes of Health are suggeting that life-and-death decisions for treating comatose patients might best be made by computer rather than relying on the guesses of your family as to how you might want to be treated. It's the old "pull the plug dilemma.''

Of course, any reasonable person stands appalled at the prospect. HAL wouldn't even open the pod bay doors, and now we're going to let him decide whether to keep the heart-lung machine on.

But then I think of my brood, the fruit of my loins. I can't say for sure that they're all ungrateful wretches just waiting for me to keel over so they have a shot at the vast holdings of the Riley fortune. But who wants to take the chance? One of them remembers the time I sent him to bed without dessert and it's curtains?

I say check the computer for mental health problems and let it do its job.