Doctor and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande argues that we should focus less on prolonging life and more on making it meaningful
When my father-in-law was in hospital, we asked his doctor if he was dying. She blustered, looked embarrassed and, eventually, said no. He was, though, and afterwards we wished wed known. It would have been a different, richer, kinder three months.
In Being Mortal, the surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande recalls being asked the same question and not really understanding it: doctors, he explains, have medicalised old age to such an extent that they no longer accept that life isnt curable. His latest book, written with his customary warmth and panache, is a plea to the medical profession and the rest of us to shift away from simply fighting for longer life towards fighting for the things that make life meaningful.
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