Brian D. Earp, Sebastian Porsdam Mann, Tsutomu Sawai, Tenzin Wangmo
Death used to be a package deal: heart, lungs and brain all stopped together, so there was no need to ask which particular stoppage constituted death. Modern intensive care, however, starting with mechanical ventilation, prised the components apart. This forced medicine to decide which cessation mattered most for specific purposes such as organ donation.1 We propose that authorship may be undergoing a similar disaggregation, likewise driven by technological innovation.