Being Mortal- Atul Gawande

I am back to hawk another one. Atul Gawande is American born surgeon of Indian origin. He has written a few books that are both critical and commercial successes. This book talks about what it means to come to the close of your lifespan wither with age or a terminal illness and how we should handle it. Ars Morendi or the art of dying is mostly lost. With all the advances in medicine over the last 50 years, we have extended the lifespan for the majority of people in the developed countries. Developing countries like India are not too far behind either. There is a tremendous amount of new treatments/ medicines that seemingly come out every day for what was previously thought of as terminal illnesses. The book deals with two unintended consequences of these advances. 1. With age, people lose the ability to take care of themselves. This is not as much a problem in India, where the children, by and large feel the duty to take care of their parents at home. However, in the more developed nations, when the elderly are unable to take care of themselves, for a variety of reasons, they are sent to nursing homes. In Nursing homes, the individual loses his/ her autonomy and sense of privacy which makes their final days lonely and miserable. The book talks about the need to move away from Nursing homes and move towards more open retirement communities where the aged can be autonomous and mingle with other men and women of their own age. They could control their time, medication and activities. There is a lot of progress towards that in recent years 2. People with terminal illnesses such as cancer are subjected to a lot of pain and suffering as part of their treatment from Chemotherapy to surgery. Some of them work and others don’t. Doctors these days have changed from individuals knowing exactly what is best for the patient to facilitators who go through various options and allow the patients to pick an option. Here is an example from the book. The author’s father had a tumor in his spine. One of the doctors gave the patient two options either perform surgery right now and risk becoming a quadriplegic or wait until the tumor grows at which point the author’s father will become invalid. Most of us are not equipped to make the decision at that stage. The book talks about needing talk about what is important for the individual. At what stage should doctors stop trying remedies which have a high cost in an individual’s life in terms of pain or other side effects with no benefit in prolonging that person’s life?

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

I am not in the habit of shilling books out here. However, I will make an exception to this one. Adapted from a Harvard course, this book talks about everything from affirmative action to patriotism and euthanasia with lucid examples and clear prose. This is not a dry textbook about philosophy or law you don't care about. It is relevant and illuminating. I guarantee that you will get through this book with a different perspective on something that you thought you believed in. Each argument presented in the book is something relatable which was on the news recently and while you may disagree...