Being Mortal

Produktbeschreibung

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, and Chicago Tribune, now in paperback with a new reading group guide

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.

Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.

In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he examines its ultimate limitations and failures-in his own practices as well as others'-as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life-all the way to the very end. 

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1
1 ¿ The Independent Self 11
2 ¿ Things Fall Apart 25
3 ¿ Dependence 55
4 ¿ Assistance 79
5 ¿ A Better Life 111
6 ¿ Letting Go 149
7 ¿ Hard Conversations 191
8 ¿ Courage 231
Epilogue 259

Notes on Sources 265
Acknowledgments 279 

Autoreninfo

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.