New watch Tikker will predict death-day
Why on earth would one pay close to Rs 5,000 for a watch that will tell us when we are going to dieIJ It's not a big amount, some would argue. But any figure is ridiculous for an instrument that informs us the day of our final departure. Moreover, many of us spend enormous amounts to eat well, dress elegantly, travel in style and, in certain cases, to merely make a statement. After splurging on good life, why spend even a penny to know precisely when we shall leave behind all that we have corneredIJ Isn’t it enough to know that we will, eventuallyIJ But the makers of the ‘death watch', named Tikker, are upbeat. They believe that the desire to know one's date of death is as consuming among people as their desperation to live. The designers of the watch will begin to ship the product from April 2014. Tikker's inventor, Fredrick Colting, has a take: He thinks that the magic product will help people plan their lives better and take care of essentials in a more focussed way, because they would know for sure when they will die. But the reverse could also happen, with people falling into a depression or getting reckless in life on being told by an instrument that they are going to breathe their last on so-and-so year or month or day. The simplicity of the exercise to arrive at the death-date is more frightening. To set up Tikker, the person has to just fill up a questionnaire regarding his and his family's medical history, his age and a few other related information. And, lo and behold, through a complex calculation, the machine starts the countdown to the D-day (D for ‘death'). The clock then begins to tick — rubbing off years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds from the user's life, till the inevitable happens. The problem is: There is no certainty that the calculations will turn out right. The person, despite all the grim information that he feeds in and which determines the calculation, may end up living longer than the period the watch concludes. We have had medical cases where the doctors gave up on a patient who later beat all odds and lived on for years. like Tikker will do, the doctors too based their prediction on the available medical history of the patient.
Tikker raises a larger issue: Should and can humankind control life and deathIJ Medicine has advanced to the extent that it can provide for better living and even painless death. But for an inventor to say that his machine can predict death-day, is stretching science far. Some years ago, the rush to preserve dead bodies in super-cooled facilities through the science of cryogenics, until the bodies could be ‘brought back to life' at some later stage when medicine had advanced enough, had turned into a fashion for the rich. There are thousands of bodies waiting for resurrection, when they ought to have been despatched to heaven — or wherever else, long ago. The rate at which humans are racing to play god, lord Yama will soon be out of work.