How One Line of Code Killed a Patient While the Monitor Said 'Everything Is Fine

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Lagos, Nigeria. 3:47 AM

The monitor said the patient was stable. Heart rate: 72. Blood pressure: 120/80. Oxygen saturation: 98%. Every number was green. Every number was perfect.


At 3:52 AM, the patient's heart stopped. The monitor didn't know.

The sensor had failed at 3:46 AM. It stopped sending data. But the monitor didn't know how to say "I don't know." So it said "72 beats per minute." It said "Everything is fine." It said "Nothing to see here."



The nurse checked again at 4:15 AM. Still 72. She wrote "Patient stable" in the chart. At 4:30 AM, the patient's daughter arrived and knew something was wrong. But it was too late. The monitor had been lying for forty-four minutes.


Every Engineer Should Be Terrified Of This Sentence

"It works."

The most dangerous sentence in engineering. When you say "it works," you mean: "In the scenarios I imagined, with the inputs I tested, the system behaved as I expected." But the scenarios you imagined are not all scenarios. The inputs you tested are not all inputs. The system you built is not the system that will be used.

I wrote the code that displayed the last known value when the sensor failed. I tested it. It worked. I never asked: What does it mean when the sensor doesn't send a value? I assumed it was a glitch. I assumed the sensor would come back. I never assumed the sensor would die and stay dead. I never assumed the patient would die while the monitor said she was fine.


What I Learned

I learned that "it works" is not a description of reality. It is a description of your tests. The engineer's job is not to make things work. It is to make things fail safely. To make things fail visibly. To make things fail in ways that can be learned from.

The nurse asked, "What if the sensor stops?" She was smarter than me. Not because she knew more about code. But because she knew more about reality.


This Is Not a Story I Tell Lightly

This is not a shock value. This is the truth. The code you write can kill someone. Not with a malicious intent. But because you're human, and humans make assumptions, and assumptions are invisible until they're not.

I wrote a book about this. It's called Mika's Law: The Sensor That Lied. And I'm giving away the first part for free.


Why Free?

Because the lesson is worth more than my comfort. Because I don't want another engineer to learn this the way I did. Because the question no one asked is the question that kills you and I want you to start asking it now.


What You'll Get in the Free Preview:


· The full Lagos monitor story (Chapter 0)

· The STEM Mindset: why STEM is a verb, not a noun (Chapter 1)

· Critical Infrastructure Thinking: what Colonial Pipeline teaches us (Chapter 5)

· The complete Mika's Law Manifesto—14 laws for engineers who refuse to look away

· Micro-exercises to test your systems thinking


Get the free preview here- 

MIKA'S LAW: The Sensor That Lied


The complete work is divided into three volumes:


· Volume 1: The Foundation — Seeing Systems

· Volume 2: The Lens and The Craft — Doing the Work

· Volume 3: The Practice — Becoming an Engineer


Read the free preview. Do the exercises. See if it changes how you think.


If it does, if you find yourself asking questions you never asked before, if you find yourself seeing systems where you used to see isolated events then the complete work is waiting for you.

Let's begin. The work continues.


Comments

  1. Abiodun folashade14 October 2026 at 00:53

    Science just got interesting with you Ma. Including a story is a game changer and I can't believe I coded with the micro exercise. I am looking forward to the volume one.

    ReplyDelete

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