Studies show that loved ones accurately predict a comatose patient's wishes only about 68 per cent of the time. So, in October 2007, researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a controversial article in the journal PLoS Medicine suggesting that decisions about treating comatose patients be made by a computer program that runs comparisons with similar patients whose wishes are known. A doctor treating a comatose, 68-year-old, black, college-educated widower, for example, might be more likely to conform to the patient's wishes by relying on the typical treatment preferences of older, black, college-educated widowers than by consulting the patient's children. Computers can beat grandmasters at chess, so why not let them decide whether you should live or die?