If you think that death is merely an abrupt end to life, you should rethink this idea and accept it as a challenge. Reading “Cheating Death” makes you realise how good our bodies are at protecting themselves – even when medicine says there is no hope.
Like a good film, this book catches your eye from the very first scene. A skier, who happens to be a radiologist, has an accident. Her head is submerged in a frozen Norwegian lake for 40 minutes. And not only does she survive, she also increases the medical debate about suspending people’s lives using cold temperatures or drugs.
Dr Sanjay Gupta, the author, works as a neurosurgeon two days a week. The rest of the week he is CNN’s chief medical correspondent. This explains the US tone to his writing – sometimes it reminds you of Hollywood, CNN or the simple American dream.
Eventually this seems to be a science fiction book, but characters are real patients and real doctors.
Some of the case studies emerge from the healthcare system of the United States, which is in need of much reform. But you tend to forgive the system as you see their doctors refusing to accept that any life is irretrievably lost; as if science ruled the country.
From an in utero surgery that saved an unborn baby with a fatal heart defect to the religious concept of a miracle – these remarkable case histories transform and enrich all our assumptions about the true nature of death and life. You then understand why more and more patients who once would have died are now alive.
Particularly fascinating is the chapter on near-death experiences. A cardiac arrest survivor tells what he saw and felt before returning from the verge of death – which seems to change his life forever. If we ever needed a way to persuade the sceptics to read this, one could point out that increasingly these experiences are being studied from the perspective of science.
Dr Gupta is aware of the controversy his book could provoke – and hopes that patients who read it become more educated rather than hope there is a cure for death. He explained in a U.S. News interview that the amount of material people have access to is made worse if it’s in the wrong context. “As a physician who is also a reporter, I fundamentally believe that having more knowledge is a good thing. It should be accurate, it should be well researched, and it should be thorough,” he said.
So one hopes his readers accept the described challenges as rare episodes that boost the advances of medicine, instead of solutions for every ill human being. Dr Sanjay Gupta is for many a hero – as shown by his almost 1.3 million Twitter followers – but he certainly cannot save everyone’s lives.
“Cheating death” is a piece of work from a true medical reporter – who brings together his understanding of medicine and a fascinating ability to write as a journalist. Easy to read, pedagogic and thrilling. Recommended.
Image created by the US Navy
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Now…I really feel like reading it!