Original Proposal

Post Reply
johnkarls
Posts: 2033
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Original Proposal

Post by johnkarls »

.
This topic was originally proposed 8/5/2016 by John Karls. It received 183 views in the "Possible Topics For Future Meetings" section of this bulletin board before being voted at our 12/14/2016 meeting as the topic for our 1/11/2016 meeting.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: The Approximately 150 Recipients of Our Weekly E-mail
Subject: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End – Jan 11
Date: Sat, December 17, 2016
Attachment:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is Wednesday evening, January 11th, at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South).

********************
OUR FOCUS BOOK

Our focus book is the long-time NY Times Bestseller “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Harvard Medical Prof. Atul Gawande (Metropolitan Books 10/7/2014 - $16.39 hardcover + shipping or $12.99 Kindle from Amazon.com – 304 pages).

Watch out because this book appears ONLY in hardcover -- don’t get snookered by paperback SUMMARIES.

The Salt Lake CITY Library has 9 copies (out of a total of 22) currently available; the Salt Lake COUNTY Library has 12 copies (out of a total of 30) currently available.

********************
AMAZON.COM SUMMARY

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.

********************
AUTHOR BIO

Dr. Atul Gwande is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health and a Surgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Gawande is the author of three bestselling books: Complications, a finalist for the National Book Award; Better, selected by Amazon.com as one of the ten best books of 2007; and The Checklist Manifesto.

A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1998, Dr. Gwande has won two National Magazine Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and been named one of the world's hundred most influential thinkers by Foreign Policy and TIME. In his work as a public health researcher, he is Director of Ariadne Labs a joint center for health system innovation. And he is also co-founder and chairman of Lifebox, a global not-for-profit implementing systems and technologies to reduce surgical deaths globally. He and his wife have three children and live in Newton, Massachusetts.

********************
BOOK REVIEW EXCERPTS

“Being Mortal, Atul Gawande's masterful exploration of aging, death, and the medical profession's mishandling of both, is his best and most personal book yet.” ―Boston Globe

“Beautifully crafted . . . Being Mortal is a clear-eyed, informative exploration of what growing old means in the 21st century . . . a book I cannot recommend highly enough. This should be mandatory reading for every American. . . . it provides a useful roadmap of what we can and should be doing to make the last years of life meaningful.” ―Time.com

“Masterful . . . Essential . . . For more than a decade, Atul Gawande has explored the fault lines of medicine . . . combining his years of experience as a surgeon with his gift for fluid, seemingly effortless storytelling . . . In Being Mortal, he turns his attention to his most important subject yet.” ―Chicago Tribune

“Beautifully written . . . In his newest and best book, Gawande . . . has provided us with a moving and clear-eyed look at aging and death in our society, and at the harms we do in turning it into a medical problem, rather than a human one.” ―The New York Review of Books

“Atul Gawande's wise and courageous book raises the questions that none of us wants to think about . . . Remarkable.” ―John Carey, The Sunday Times (UK)

“Dr. Gawande's book is not of the kind that some doctors write, reminding us how grim the fact of death can be. Rather, he shows how patients in the terminal phase of their illness can maintain important qualities of life.” ―Wall Street Journal (Best Books of 2014)

“Gawande's book is so impressive that one can believe that it may well [change the medical profession] . . . May it be widely read and inwardly digested.” ―Diana Athill, Financial Times (UK)

“Eloquent, moving.” ―The Economist (Best Books of 2014)

“A great read that leaves you better equipped to face the future, and without making you feel like you just took your medicine.” ―Mother Jones (Best Books of 2014)

“A needed call to action, a cautionary tale of what can go wrong, and often does, when a society fails to engage in a sustained discussion about aging and dying.” ―San Francisco Chronicle

********************
RSVP’s REQUESTED BY NEXT FRIDAY

In accordance with our quorum-policy revision of 6/12/2013, instead of waiting until the last week before each monthly meeting to request RSVP's and canceling if we do not have our minimum quorum of six, RSVP's are requested in our first-of-the-monthly-cycle weekly e-mail.

Those who have RSVP’d will be informed immediately when we reach six so they can proceed to read the materials with assurance a discussion will take place.

If there are not six RSVP's by 11:59 pm next Friday, then next week's weekly e-mail will announce that the 1/11/2017 meeting is cancelled.

********************
SKYPE PARTICIPATION

Non-SLCounty residents (and residents who are out of town) are invited to participate in our meeting via Skype.

If you would like to do so, please press your reply button and type “request participation via Skype” and we will contact you to make appropriate arrangements.

********************
We hope to see all of you on Jan 11th to discuss “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End.”

Your friend,

John K.

PS -- To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."

NB: Please do NOT block our e-mail because you are too embarrassed to request a deletion -- 10 of our approximately 150 regular e-mail recipients use Comcast.net which has an algorithm blocking all e-mails from a website for which a certain percentage of recipients have requested blockage AND 3 of our regular meeting attendees who use Comcast.net now can NOT receive our weekly e-mails.

Post Reply

Return to “Original Proposal – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End – Jan 11”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest