Friends of the UNCG Libraries to Discuss Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

October 5 at  7 p.m.  Book discussion of  Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande.  Discussion leaders: Drs. Janne and Rob Cannon.  Hodges Reading Room, Jackson Library.

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher who will speak in Greensboro as part of Guilford College’s Bryan Series on October 20. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

The book’s website says "Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should. Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along with all of it."

Our discussion will be led by Drs. Janne and Rob Cannon.  Janne is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and Rob is a Professor in the Department of Biology at UNCG where he has been a faculty member since 1972.

The discussions are free and open to the public on a space available basis, with preference given to members of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries who register.

If you have questions, contact Barry Miller at 336-256-0112.

Please contact Barry Miller at barry_miller@uncg.edu or 336-256-0112 at least one week prior to the event to request disability accommodations. In all situations, a good faith effort (up until the time of the event) will be made to provide accommodations.