Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds

by Sanjay Gupta

An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect . . . a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake . . . a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors have declared a "vegetable."

Twenty years ago all of them would have been given up for dead, with no realistic hope for survival. But today, thanks to incredible new medical advances, each of these individuals is alive and well . . .Cheating Death.

In this riveting book, Dr. Sanjay Gupta-neurosurgeon, chief medical correspondent for CNN, and bestselling author-chronicles the almost unbelievable science that has made these seemingly miraculous recoveries possible. A bold new breed of doctors has achieved amazing rescues by refusing to accept that any life is irretrievably lost. Extended cardiac arrest, "brain death," not breathing for over an hour-all these conditions used to be considered inevitably fatal, but they no longer are. Today, revolutionary advances are blurring the traditional line between life and death in fascinating ways.

Drawing on real-life stories and using his unprecedented access to the latest medical research, Dr. Gupta dramatically presents exciting accounts of how pioneering physicians and researchers are altering our understanding of how the human body functions when it comes to survival-and why more and more patients who once would have died are now alive. From experiments with therapeutic hypothermia to save comatose stroke or heart attack victims to lifesaving operations in utero to the study of animal hibernation to help wounded soldiers on far-off battlefields, these remarkable case histories transform and enrich all our assumptions about the true nature of death and life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Medical, Medicine, Health, Audiobook, Unfinished

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database
Sanjay Gupta is an American physician and a contributing CNN chief health correspondent based in Atlanta, Georgia. An assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, he is also a frequent guest on the news program Anderson Cooper 360°. "Charity Hospital" won a 2006 Emmy Award for Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast. From 1997 to 1998, he served as one of fifteen White House Fellows, primarily as an advisor to Hillary Clinton. Gupta currently publishes a column in TIME magazine. He is also host of House Call with Dr Sanjay Gupta. His book Chasing Life was a New York Times and National bestseller. As of January 2009, he has been offered the position of Surgeon General of the United States in the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama; the final vetting is currently under way.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is important. What I learned of great importance is that people who die from lack of effective CPR after a heart attack do so for two reasons. The first is that unrelated bystanders seeing someone collapse are unwilling to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in case they catch something. The other reason is that mouth-to-mouth CPR is very ineffective. The blood holds enough oxygen to keep the brain going for a while, which it can't do without a beating heart is circulate the blood. Forget the mouth-to-mouth and give constant compressions.This is the most effective form of CPR until professional help or a defibrillator is available.

At the beginning of open heart surgery, the procedure had to be done very quickly until it was discovered that if the person was cooled right down, the whole body had much less need of oxygen and the circulation that made it possible. Chilling the body is now used for all sorts of things in hospitals although some still do not accept its medical efficacy. People have survived drowning incidents of more than an hour because they were chilled in the water. Chilling stroke patients with cold blankets, anything, can help with survival.

There is much else in the book including prenatal surgery on the forming baby, which is fascinating and an area that will definitely grow, to discussions of longevity. The book is full of anecdotes and human stories as much as research and is a really good read from that aspect as well as for the insights it provides.

[Amina (ⴰⵎⵉⵏⴰ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through true stories, the author takes the reader on a wild ride into what looks like science -fiction of modern medecine.

From hypothermia and the struggles doctors are facing to get it approved to the man who would've remained a vegetable if it was not to the tenacity of his doctor, Sanjay Gupta MD narrates many experiences both patients and their doctors share.

I really liked the first chapter about Mads Gilbert who is an inspiration, the way he handled his patients and the devotion and non giving up he showed everytime.
The near-death experience part was also very interesting, sometimes pretty much unbelievable, still nagging the researchers.

Overall, this is a good book that I recommend to any curious soul.

[Kim V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cheating Death by Sanjay Gupta, M.D. would be considered science fiction if the stories were not true. The dramatic vignettes include: a skier submerged in icy waters for over an hour without a pulse; a man with an invariably lethal brain tumor who lives to celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of his diagnosis; and a “hopeless” neurological patient who returns to his medical practice. These “medical miracles” occurred in large part due to the interruption of the death domino chain. As Gupta explains,

Death is not a single event, but a process that may be interrupted, even reversed. And . . . at any point during this process, the course of what seems inevitable can be changed. That is precisely what . . . the book [is about:]: the possibility of cheating death.

In addition, to the compelling personal survival stories, Gupta also highlights exciting new medical research that may save scores of lives in the future. The chapter on suspended animation (a medically induced “safe cocoon”) is particularly exciting! Suspended animation involves turning the heart off for an extended period of time and later restarting it. As one researcher reflects, “the whole of emergency medicine is a time dependent thing . . . . [And:] things that can’t be fixed now, we could fix with more time. There’s no question.”

Cheating Death is an entertaining and eye opening read into the medical advances of today and a glimpse into the promise of tomorrow.



Publisher: Wellness Central, Hachette Book Group (Oct. 12, 2009), 282 pages.
Review Copy Provided Courtesy of the Publisher.

[Haley Mathiot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Gupta takes his readers on a wild ride through modern medical science. I learned so much from this book! It was interesting, fast-paced, informative, but also held a certain amount of adventure and suspense as Gupta tells stories and relates interviews with people who have had amazing experiences with life and death—and in-between. Prepare to have your mind boggled with modern day science written in easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow prose.

Audio review: The audio-book was read by the author, and he is one of the best readers I’ve listened to. Gupta takes pride in his own work, and it shows through his voice. It’s not too fast or slow, is read with energy, and is enjoyable and engaging.

Recommendation: Ages 16+ to anyone who likes non-fiction, medical thrillers, or thrillers of any kind.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book feels a bit too narrow in showing remarkable innovations that could be part of modern medicine. The most glaring example is treatment of heart attack victims by "cooling" the brain. Only once did the author mention, "Oh yeah... there was a person we did this for that's now basically a vegetable in a nursing home." Even the daughter of the poor woman said she wouldn't try such extreme measures if she had to do it again. No one is happy to let a loved one pass, but sometimes we need to learn to let go a little sooner, not keep someone in a medical induced coma for 10 years. I'm happy that changes and discoveries are ongoing, but this book jumps the gun on a lot of treatments. I felt like the examples were exceptions instead of typical results.

[MKF · Rating 2 out of 5]

The whole time I was reading this my mind kept returning to the same thought. How many people have people rushed to pronounce dead that still had a chance of survival? If different procedures and options were available would many of those people still be here? Then I was left wondering how many people have pulled the plug on family members too soon? If people in vegetative states or brain dead could be proven to still retain consciousness would there be more stories of survival?
This book made me think and did not help with my paranoia and anxiety about what could happen. I did enjoy it and liked learning about all the different ways people are trying to understand death better to save more lives. The only part I didn't like was the discussion on prayers and faith and the hint that prayers can lead to miracles.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He closed his eyes. Death was nowhere to be seen."

How to cheat death:
1. Have the will to live
2. Have a doctor who wants you to have a will to live

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading Sanjay Gupta's writing in my creative nonfiction classes and being really impressed with him. He has amazing skill at making topics in the medical field accessible and really interesting to the average person like me, whose eyes usually glaze over at the slightest medical-sounding words.

This book, where Gupta looks into the great advances that are happening throughout the medical community in cheating death, really fascinated me. Treatments that seem like they have been pulled right out of the future are happening in hospitals around the world, saving people's lives and in some cases, nearly bringing them back from the dead. There are chapters about heart attack victims, therapeutic hypothermia, brain tumors, and even suspended animation. I can't wait to see some of these advances continue further into fruition. We might not be that far from placing humans in suspended animation for space flight, which really excites me!! Once scientist has already done it in fruitflies.

I had so much to think about after reading this book. Questions like, when does death actually occur? are really not as straightforward as they seem. I loved the way Gupta integrates real stories and personal accounts into his writing. It really helps make this book more readable. I enjoyed every minute of reading this book. I was completely shocked by some of the miracles that he writes about. He also addresses things like near-death experiences and how prayer affects healing. Reading this book can raise more questions than it gives answers, but that is what I loved about it.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book, and learned some valuable things. Most practical:
I now know that if ever I need to give CPR to anyone, I should just do the heart palpitations and skip the mouth-to-mouth. Turns out patients have a better survival rate that way. Most mind-bending: There isn't really a "line" between life and death. Death is a process, a chain reaction in a body when too much goes wrong. And the process CAN be reversed, if it hasn't gone too far. Most surprising:Cryonics isn't just for the rich and crazy. There's a darn good chance that those people who pay $150,000(which they most often do with life insurance proceeds) to have their bodies quick-frozen just after the process of death has begun may very well be brought "back to life" some time in the not-all-that-distant future.

I found the chapter on "near death experiences" especially fascinating. As he does throughout the book, Gupta manages to retain scientific objectivity while avoiding arrogant dismissal of that which goes against current scientific understanding. I love knowing that there's a doctor/researcher hanging tiles with pictures on the top from hospital ceilings so that anyone who has an out-of-body experience might see them and give us solid evidence that the experience wasn't "just in their head." I doubt anything will come of this experiment, but what if something did!

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating. In "Cheating Death The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds," Dr. Sanjay Gupta examines cutting edge methods used in treating patients many others may have given up on--either because they appear dead (a shifting line he covers in this book) or are diagnosed as having an incurable disease, such as a glioblastoma, the worst kind of brain tumor.

While the entire book is intriguing, the most fascinating chapters for me were "Cheating Death in the Womb"--which covers surgical repair of defects to fetuses still in the womb--and "What is a Miracle," which deals with some of the unexpected in medicine, like brain tumors that suddenly vanish, and may or may not reoccur.

I have a nursing background, so books like this hold an appeal for me. But you don't need a medical background to understand what's happening to the various patients discussed in the book. Gupta does an excellent job breaking down what could be overwhelmingly complex medical issues and diagnosis into language anyone can understand.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only paid a dollar for this at the store, and while it wasn't a bad book by any means, just didn't live up to my expectations. Some of the patient stories carried through multiple chapters, which tied different lifesaving efforts together. Even so, I felt that Gupta spent a lot of time on the people behind these advancements and their research projects, which led to dryness in some chapters. The one on near death experiences particularly fell into this category. In contrast, I found the piece on fetal surgery very interesting and a refreshing change from the chapters that dealt with hypothermia, CPR, and other treatments used primarily on heart attack and stroke victims.
I'm interested in reading Gupta's book 'Monday Mornings' and hope that it holds my interest better than this one did. His writing style is fine, just wasn't as drawn into the subject matter as I thought I'd be.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating stories of patients and doctors who won't give up. Great lines like this from Chapter Seven's "What is a Miracle?" -- " The story I am about to tell you is one I think of every time I walk into a patient's room as a neurosurgeon. It is a story I remember when I am about to tell a patient the worst news of all." Lots of unbelievable stories with tantalizing lead-in's like the previous one, all told with a personal passion and quest for answers by Dr. Gupta. Hope is critical to survival and the most complaining patients seem to be the survivors. Gupta diplomatically walks the line been between those who believe in God and those who use science as their guide. Lots of introspection here that will make you consider living and dying in a new "light."

[Tat2d · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite late to the party as it was published in 2009, but nonetheless it is the most fascinating book I have read in quite some time. From a modern medicine standpoint, the book challenges where the line of life and death is actually drawn. You get the sense that science and religion may have common ground to stand on one day. The book highlights the challenges pioneers in the field of medicine face especially when contradicting decades of conventional wisdom. You may also learn a few simple things that could save you or your loved ones' lives. Whatever the case, it's a fast and easy read that leaves one with a sense of hope and wonderment. Fuckin' science! (I needed a curse word).

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book Dr. Gupta discusses topics such as the definition of death, a variety of medical treatments that can stave off death, and the controversial topic of near-death experiences. All of these topics proved to be thought provoking. Consider the question, “What is death?” A more accurate question may be, “Where do you draw the line between life and death?” Is it the stoppage of the heart? Is it a cessation of brain function? Is it something else? This is important because some medical treatments actually cross these lines. For example, Dr. Gupta points out that the heart is briefly stopped during the implantation of a pacemaker. If your definition of death is stoppage of the heart, then the patient is briefly dead.

One treatment protocol involves therapeutic hypothermia, which buys time for treatment by slowing biological processes that could result in death. For this lifesaving treatment, we owe accidental discovery in alpine countries where accident victims who were chilled by snow or cold water had an improved survival rate. Interestingly enough, while it gained rapid acceptance in Europe, it languished under bureaucratic red tape in the U.S. One agency wanted more testing to verify its efficacy. However, a different agency whose approval was required for more testing considered it so effective that it was unethical to withhold it from test subjects. As a result, there was no further testing and, consequently, no approval by the time this book was published. Administratium in action! (Tell me this isn’t a government operation. Apollo 13)

I was fascinated by Dr. Gupta’s discussion of changes in CPR. I remember getting CPR certification in high school, alternating between chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth respiration. It has been simplified to chest compressions only. Apparently, there is a significant amount of oxygen in the system already, and what matters is continuation of blood flow. In other words, pausing chest compressions to administer mouth-to-mouth respiration may do more harm that good. Furthermore, bystanders are more likely to intervene in a cardiac emergency if all they have to do is chest compressions. Apparently, mouth-to-mouth is a bit of a turn-off.

One treatment that seems completely counterintuitive is hydrogen sulfide, which has effects similar to carbon monoxide. In other words, it ties up oxygen in the system. While oxygen is necessary for life, it is also involved in the biochemical reactions of death. Removing oxygen from play slows or even stops these reactions, which can then restart once oxygen is restored under controlled conditions. Dr. Gupta gave the example of a soldier shot up in Afghanistan far from a medical facility, his unit pinned down. The medic dosed him with hydrogen sulfide, and biochemical processes paused, including the beating of his heart and the resultant bleeding. He could be un-paused when he later arrived at a medical center. This almost sounds like science fiction stasis or suspended animation and is the result of studying hibernating animals, etc. It was astonishing to hear about experiments in which lab rats were turned off by filling their enclosures with hydrogen sulfide and then turned back on without apparent adverse effects by replacing it with oxygen. Very strange. Yet who cares that it is strange. What matters is that it works and saves lives.

Two controversial topics addressed by Dr. Gupta were near-death experiences and the healing power of prayer, both of which defy scientific explanation, yet have both been studied scientifically. One medical researcher actually placed patterns on the tops of suspended ceiling panels out of view of the interior of the room. In the event of an out-of-body experience, would the relevant patient notice and report these patterns? Studies about the power of prayer have been mixed. Some studies support efficacy of prayer, while others do not. There is significant disagreement regarding both phenomena among medical professionals and researchers. Some are convinced that there is a mechanist biological explanation that just hasn’t been found yet, while others open to evidence of something beyond the material world. Regardless, it is as much an act of faith to seek a material explanation as it is to seek a spiritual explanation.

One interesting point made by Dr. Gupta in an author interview at the end of the audiobook was that doctors who treat conditions using natural methods and not with lots of pills or other technology tend to be perceived by patients as not being good doctors. I am writing my review as the COVID-19 pandemic is winding down. Because the virus as well as strategies to contain, mitigate and treat it had real-world effects on real people, there was widespread disagreement both among the public and medical professionals regarding what to do. This review is not the place to rehash all those controversies and conflicts. However, I think Dr. Gupta’s point has bearing on one of them in particular, natural immunity. People who had been infected and had the antibodies were pressured and often compelled to receive vaccines. Was it a control issue (i.e. because I said so!), a common conclusion, or was it rooted in the perception that the new-fangled gadget was required to be the good doctor? Some combination of the two? Dr. Gupta didn’t go here. However, my review, my observations.

I came away from this book with an appreciation for the mysteries of the human body, the handiwork of a master craftsman, the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent Lord. Yes, I acknowledge that this is a statement of faith. Deal with it!

Dr. Gupta discusses other medical technologies in addition to those listed above. It takes a good communicator to elucidate arcane methods and technologies before a general audience.

[Feng Ouyang · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cheating Death” is a journalistic book on medical technologies and efforts in saving and preserving lives. It covers seven areas of medical advancements.
• Induced hypothermia. By artificially lowering body temperature, we reduce body oxygen needs and buy more time for resuscitation.
• CPR protocol Revision. We Focus on heart pumping and forego artificial breathing in CPR. Heart pumping pushes residual oxygen in the blood to vital organs. Artificial breathing interrupts heart pumping and reduces the effect.
• Cells are more likely to be damaged in a low oxygen condition than no oxygen at all. When blood circulation stops, we can create a “suspend” condition for cells by completely cutting off oxygen supply or using drugs that block oxygen reception.
• Near-death experiences (NDE). It may be similar to dreams when the brain makes up stories without sensory input. There are still unexplained medical observations and open questions. But the answer is not necessarily tied with soul and other super-natural factors.
• Brain-dead debate. There are many cases and growing evidence that what we today consider “brain dead” may be a state of consciousness. It remains challenging to determine whether a patient is in an irreversible vegetate state. Patients may even have awareness and senses when we think they are in a deep coma.
• Surgery in the womb. Technology advances allow us to intervene with fetus development to cure deadly diseases.
• Medical miracles. There are many cases of unexpected recovery from fatal diseases such as brain tumors. Some are still inexplicable, while others are tied to experimental medical techniques.
Fascinating as they are, the stories told in the book are evidence-based. The author took pain to separate facts from speculations and religious notions. At the same time, the book advocates “out of box” thing that challenges conventional wisdom. Medical science is still in its infancy, and many widely-accepted notions are not well-founded.
Life and death is an enduring and captivating topic. By zooming into the process of dying and the opportunities to reverse it, the book adds a new dimension to the discussion. Overall, this book is both informative and enjoyable, an excellent light reading.

[Crystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author, Sanjay Gupta, is a practicing neurosurgeon & associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital & assistant professor at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. He is a columnist for Time Magazine & chief medical correspondent at CNN.

This was a really interesting book & I was very intrigued by all the various stories, some that really stuck out are below:

Cardiologist Dr. Gordon Ewy at the Sarver Heart Center in Tucson had been doing CPR experiments for more than 20 years. The focus was to try to understand the role that artificial breathing plays in an emergency resuscitation. For more than a decade he has argued that breathing was nearly irrelevant. Ewy began noticing that the survival rates for people getting chest compressions alone weren’t only as good as people getting full AHA-approved CPR, they were better. Almost by accident, the public health campaign had stumbled onto a medical discovery.
To understand Ewy’s theory about CPR, you have to know about the 3 phase model of cardiac arrest.
The 3 phases are electrical, circulatory, & metabolic.
The first lasts approx 4 minutes, during which time the heart still pulsates with its own electrical energy.
The circulatory phase lasts approx 4 minutes after cardiac arrest until the 10 minute mark. Whatever oxygen was present in the blood has been consumed, and without oxygen, the heart can no longer generate electrical energy. The absence of oxygen also triggers dangerous chemical reactions throughout the body, as cells turn to sources of stored energy. At a certain point-about 10 minutes after cardiac arrest- the cascade of cell-killing chemical reactions reaches a crescendo.
This marks the third step toward death, the metabolic phase. It’s during this time that cell death begins in earnest.

The model helps explain why some interventions work. During the electrical phase, defibrillation is highly effective, but after that; not so much. That’s because defibrillation doesn’t restore electricity to the heart; it just resets the rhythm. For it to work, the heart needs to have enough energy present to resume beating once given the chance.
In traditional CPR, artificial breaths are supposed to add oxygen to the blood & chest compressions are meant to circulate that oxygen. We can see that when breathing ceases, for several minutes there is still a good amount of oxygen sitting in the bloodstream. The human body stores far more oxygen than we are generally aware of, & that oxygen lingers for some time after we’ve actually stopped breathing. Therein lies an important lesson that turns conventional CPR on its head; maybe, just maybe those artificial breaths aren’t necessary.

According to the American Hearth Association, for every minutes that goes by without someone attempting CPR or defibrillation, the odds of survival decrease 7-10 percent.

* Without any oxygen at all the deadly chemical reactions couldn’t take place. Given a high dose of carbon monoxide, each insect froze in place, but it wasn’t dead. It was like hitting the pause button on the remote. Each insect could survive 24 hours, then resume it’s normal business as soon as the carbon monoxide in the enclosure was replaced by oxygen.

*Not every Near Death Experience is the same, but Moody has noticed several common features of consistent characteristics in the stories people told about what happened when they died. . The first signal is DEATH, a usually loud, unpleasant noise.
A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long, dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.
Soon other things happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a warm, loving spirit of a kind he has encountered before- a being of light- appears before him. This being asks him a question, nonverbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. He finds himself approaching some kind of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life.

The notion of a soul as separate from the body is as ancient as humankind.

Nowhere in our lives is there as transparent an interface between spirituality and science as there is with near-death experience.

During REM sleep the body is paralyzed- a condition known as atonia.

After a near death experience, people don’t fear death. They know there’s an afterlife, and they think it’s wonderful.

In 2006, Schiff examined the brain of an Arkansas man who had woken up after nearly two decades in a coma. Terry Wallis was 19 years old with a 5 month old daughter, when his pickup truck veered off the side of a steep hill. Along with causing severe brain damage, the accident life him completely paralyzed. Nineteen years later, a nursing home aide, making conversation, asked who was coming to visit that day. The aide’s jaw dropped as Wallis answered, “Mom”. Within months, he was speaking frequently and had even regained the ability to make new memories. His family allowed Schiff to peer inside Wallis’ brain, using PET scans and diffusion tensor imaging. He found that Wallis had grown new brain connections, working around the severe damage he suffered in the crash. That’s pretty surprising to many people; until recently most doctors were taught in medical school that brain cells, once dead, do not regenerate.

You’ve got a choice; dig in your heels, wrap yourself around hope, or crawl into a corner and die. There’s nothing in between.

Since the 1970’s, it’s been standard care to treat cardiac arrest by giving a shot epinephrine (adrenaline) along with any CPR and defibrillation. But doctors in Norway just finished a study that lasted 5 years, with more than a thousand patients, comparing the survival rates of patients who received epinephrine during their cardiac arrest with patients who did not. There were no difference in survival. The standard treatment didn’t help at all.

When we challenge conventional wisdom, we may find that treatments we’ve taken for granted- like traditional CPR- aren’t terribly effective, and we may find newer approaches that work better.

[Patricia Joynton]

Great book--for me anyway. I have enough medical education to enjoy it but not enough to make it boring. Cheating Death: How it's done according to Gupta.

First we define death: Is it when the heart stops or when the brain stops?

We select brain death (the most common definition): Then we try to figure out what kind of brain death: the real kind (involving higher brain functions, plus the brain stem), or kinds that look real (vegetative state, or minimally conscious state). Dr Gupta says we could not tell from looking which state it is, but also many neurologists cannot tell.

We come to: how do we identify those who are a candidate for surgery? We increase the success with fetal surgery by doing it while "in the womb,"; cooling the body so metabolic processes slow down, providing time; continuous chest compressions with no mouth-to-mouth for cardiac arrest, and a method that sounds to me like hibernation called suspended animation.

All this takes one back to the beginning: what is death? Gupta then reaches for philosophy and religion to investigate and complete his search. Is it a miracle or is it God? To me, I wonder if we should go back to burying people with a bell to ring in the casket, just in case they are not dead...

[Arianna Piech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can near death experiences be explained by science? How does hypothermia actually help with healing? What if soldiers wounded in battle could be given a simple shot that would suspend them in time and give them a better chance of recovery? Why was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation removed from CPR methods? This book explores these questions and more.

I found this book when my library didn’t have the book I was actually looking for, and I’m so glad I stumbled upon it! It is very thought provoking, and Gupta goes into a brief discussion of the science behind many of his topics. I think the book would be accessible to someone without a science background, and for those of us that have taken microbio courses/genetics/etc. it’s easy ready that allows you to think beyond the book into the hard science aspects. One of the best lessons I took from this book is that not all discoveries and inventions are high tech/pharma, but can be based on simple solutions that aren’t already used.

I would recommend this book to anyone considering medicine or interested in health care!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need everyone to read this. I love Sanjay Gupta, and even more after reading this.
I started this book the day I finished my required basic life saver course for work - which is interesting as he starts by talking about how important CPR is in saving people's lives when they are having cardiac arrest. He summarizes the book by talking about the moving line between life and death and shares fascinating stories of people who survived against odds whether due early intervention or unique (not yet widely) used medical practices. (He even includes information on the nervous system and PTSD-- so I was on full nerd mode!!) I was fascinated throughout and he tells a highly complex story in a digestible format. I am smarter, I am more compassionate and I am entertained. I will be reading his other books and talking about these for a while.

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, exploring medical advances in the pursuit of prolonging life (cooling folks during cardiac death, new cancer treatments, better CPR approaches, heart surgery in utero)was an easy listen if not a particularly hard hitting one. I was surprised that this book didn’t visit the concept of a good death, or even really draw any conclusions at all, but I learned a bit, and I always love anecdotal stories, which this book was full of.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched.

Very closely related to my own experience with cheating death. Same conclusions- divine intervention, skills of the doctors, a miracle, and unexpected survival. Then cherishing things more.

I found myself taking many notes and quoting a lot of his observations.

There were a couple chapters unrelated to my story all the same but I knew this coming into this reading it, it was also nice to hear others stories of survival with the odds stacked against them as well.

[DooMe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book a lot. It's wrapped into a nice story with many interesting case studies that show how fragile the border between life and death can be. And like life itself reflects more of a greyzone. Rather then a outdated dualistic thinking of black and white/alive and death.

[Anna Engel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that describes the amazing ability for medicine to heal--even to the extent of bringing someone back from death. It's important to emphasize that that can't happen in all cases, but it's amazing nonetheless.

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audio version of this title. It was fast-paced, and kept my interest. The medical miracles were quite interesting, and gave the listener a view of the possibilities of medical advances in the future.

[Emily Mellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent, but it lost a couple of stars because it felt a bit repetitive. Not his best or most interesting writing. I guess I would have preferred the information distilled, rather than given via long drawn out and redundant anecdotes.

[Saaya Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

really interesting read - he definitely writes like a reporter which is strange lingo for a book on medicine. would love to read an update on these practices too just because it’s a little outdated.

[Kaylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Sometimes was a bit confusing, because he jumped back and forth into different stories within a story. Incredible recoveries by some people.

[✿✿✿May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating! It was an easy listening audiobook and I learnt a lot from this!

[Rosanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd rather have had more stories and anecdotes- too much science for me. Plus I disagreed with much of the basic principle of the book. But fascinating and well written.

[Cheryl Hopkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read!!