Another scientist addresses reality as we know it?

“Being Mortal” – Ageing, Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande, published by Profile Books & Wellcome Collection on 1st July 2015 – £8.99 available in Paperback and eBook.  Find it in all good book stores.

Gawande has penned two other books relevant to this – his latest one – “Better,  Complications”

and “The Checklist Manifesto”.

In this piece of writing, Gawande expresses a somewhat negative view of the way the medical services are equipped to deal with a process we are mostly all destined for – that of becoming less well through age, and the ultimate process of dying.

In many parts of the world, medical services prolong life in all age groups, but this is where Gawande examines in the only way possible – with a rather ironic and gruelling realism pertaining to that of prolonging the life of very old people with numerous complications which can be used to keep people alive who no longer have any real values in living.  He goes into detail in some of his chapters, diagnoses and  treatment, and additionally highlights the fact that science has now reached such a  high stage of technology that we can live even decades longer  than years before as a result of this.

There is more than a hint at the fact that quality as well as quantity of years is utmost in living. Now we have homes and hospitals for the elderly and the treatment routines “fail to serve people’s needs and priorities beyond mere survival”. It is alluded to that the consequences of these leaps forward in science can be “devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering”.  Of course this suffering could also be with the families and friends of very ill old people who are kept alive by modern medicine. There however must be a clear line drawn between very ill old people and mostly well old people.

A reviewer for the English “Spectator” has ruminated, “It is to his tremendous credit that Gawande has turned his attention to mortality.  We need people of such outstanding intelligence and compassion to consider the ever-growing problems associated with our ageing population”.  The Independent gave a glowing review informing us, “This humane and beautifully written book is a manifesto that could radically improve the lives of the aged and the terminally ill”.

Atul Gawande, for those who do not know, is a surgeon, writer and public health researcher.  He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston.  He is also a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.  He writes regularly for the New Yorker, and is the author of several books – please refer to the beginning of this aticle for some details.

In summary, growing old gracefully and with dignity is never far from our minds as the press constantly challenges us to consider it and our own personal journey towards old age when disease and ill health may challenge us.  I would like to see the author of “Being Mortal” perhaps conquer another question – “What is the ultimately best way for us all to grow old and finally meet the “winter” of our respective lives in the most effective way possible”?.  I look forward to Atul Gawande’s next popular book.

Penny Nair Price