Sook Shin and her husband are respected cancer researchers at an Oklahoma University research lab, committing their lives to finding a cure for prostate cancer. The couple recently stopped at a Panera Bread restaurant for a quick meal, and returned to their car to find a window broken, and their Apple computer, carrying years of data—the product of thousands of hours and research dollars—including, they say, a possible cancer cure, gone. Tragically, they had not backed up the data.

I feel sorry for them; I feel sorry for prostate cancer suffers present and future. I feel fury at the fact that people break into other people’s cars.

The reality is, however, that the risk of losing laptops is well known: hundreds of thousands get lost and stolen every year. The risk of not backing up computer data is also well known, as is the danger of having a car broken into. Leaving vital, potentially life saving data, without back-up, on a laptop, in an automobile?

This is only slightly less irresponsible than leaving one’s child to cook in a locked car.  Shin told reporters that the data in the computer could save millions of lives, but she’s afraid whoever took the laptop will wipe its memory and sell it. Unfortunately, the couple didn’t record the computer’s serial number, which makes finding it nearly impossible.The more I think about this, the more I think it might even be worse than leaving a child in a car.

Putting proprietary data or important, unduplicated data on a portable device that is so easily stolen or lost can no longer be excused as a mistake. The consequences are too great; the risks are too obvious.

It is unethical. Sook Sin says that she feels terribly guilty.

Good.