Being Mortal

Atul Gawande ist Facharzt für Chirurgie an einer Klinik in Boston. Als Wissenschaftsredakteur veröffentlicht er regelmäßig Beiträge in 'The New Yorker'. Vor seiner medizinischen Ausbildung an der Harvard Medical School studierte der Sohn zweier Ärzte Philosophie und Ethik. Gawande lebt mit seiner Frau und drei Kindern in Newton, Massachusetts.

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.

Introduction 11 ¿ The Independent Self 112 ¿ Things Fall Apart 253 ¿ Dependence 554 ¿ Assistance 795 ¿ A Better Life 1116 ¿ Letting Go 1497 ¿ Hard Conversations 1918 ¿ Courage 231Epilogue 259Notes on Sources 265Acknowledgments 279