#1 New York Times Bestseller
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest
challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but
also the process of its ending
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and
infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable
condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently
to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes,
preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs.
Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the
goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life,
continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend
suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate
limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for
patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially
fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he
explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's
last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal
asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the
end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.
