Atul Gawande's Being Mortal left me tearful, angry and unable to stop talking about it for a week. Gawande's central argument is this: since the mid-twentieth century, death has been progressively transformed into a medical experience that the majority of doctors are ill-equipped to deal with. The evidence shows that this giant experiment is failing. As Gawande notes, when the medical problems of the dying cannot be fixed by medicine, "callousness, inhumanity, and extraordinary suffering" can result. This book is a call to action - a reconsideration of what makes life worth living and how all, including elderly people and those with terminal illnesses, can find access to that. Making old age meaningful, Gawande shows, demands a massive shake-up in medical and nursing care. With the number of over-65s in the United States and Europe expected to double by 2050， this is a time bomb that we need to defuse fast.
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