The Way We Die Now: The View from Medicine's Front Line

Dying has never been more exposed, with public figures writing memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of death.Dying has become medicalized and sanitized, but doctors cannot prescribe a “good death." The Way We Die Now asks us to consider how we have gotten to this age of spiritual poverty and argues that giving up our fantasies of control over death can help restore its significance.. Most of the dying spend their last days in general hospitals and nursing homes, in the care of strangers. This is the starting point of Seamus O’Mahony’s book on the western way of death. We have lost the ability to deal with death. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are often robbed of their dignity after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions

"A valuable and thoughtful treatment that effectively draws on O'Mahony's professional insights as well as his Irish Catholic upbringing to provide glimpses into Western society's relationship with mortality." Library Journal"The 'over-medicalization' of modern dying is at the core of O’Mahony’s criticism; he maintains that doctors might better help their dying patients by giving up 'the quest to conquer nature' and returning 'to a core function of providing comfort and succor.' O’Mahony’s clear-eyed analysis is important, poignant, and immensely humane." Publisher's Weekly, starred review"A searingly honest, humane and challenging book to prompt a wider conversation about death and dying." The Guardian UK

DR. SEAMUS O’MAHONY is a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Cork University Hospital. He is the author of The Way We Die Now.. He is associate editor for medical humanities of the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books