Seamus O'Mahony – författare

A fierce, honest, elegant and often hilarious debunking of the great fallacies that drive modern medicine. By the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now. Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be 'conquered' ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion. 'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday. 'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times.

The search for a world in which old age is a curable disease, and death is optional, unites Elon Musk, Bryan Johnson and Gwyneth Paltrow. The longevity industry is a vast, pseudo-medical enterprise that has spawned countless bestselling books, social media frenzies and a huge network of conferences and pharmacological research. Seamus O'Mahony casts his skeptical and acerbic eye over this landscape in his brilliant quest to uncover the truth behind an industry – largely funded by Silicon Valley billionaires – which feeds off the gullibility of rich investors and death-phobic consumers to sell drugs, stem cell therapy, gene therapy and intermittent fasting. He draws upon real scientific evidence to cut through the nonsense and to make a serious case for why this industry is unlikely to find a real solution. O’Mahony’s investigation will dive deep into this world as he attends longevity conferences and meets some of its infamous figures in their natural habitats. He has a gift for witty caricatures exposing the ridiculousness of powerful individuals in this space: including Aubrey de Grey (tall, stick-thin, Rasputin-like beard and hair, drawling old-Harrovian accent), David Sinclair (professor of genetics at Harvard medical school, and huge fraud), Peter Diamandis (entrepreneur, multimillionaire, space tourism pioneer and author of aspirational business books), Bryan Johnson (multimillionaire and case study for longevity mania), and Peter Attia (celebrity doctor to Gwyneth Paltrow and Elon Musk).Praise for Can Medicine Be Cured?‘An exceptionally strong polemic – one that might even persuade Miley Cyrus to start eating wheat again’ Sunday Business Post‘A book on health that everyone should read this year... A fascinating read for patients, medics and anyone who cares’ Sunday Independent (Dublin)'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times

The search for a world in which old age is a curable disease, and death is optional, unites billionaires, politicians and celebrities. The longevity industry is a vast, pseudo-medical enterprise that has spawned countless bestselling books, social media frenzies and a huge network of conferences and pharmacological research.Seamus O'Mahony casts his sceptical and acerbic eye over this landscape in his brilliant quest to uncover the truth behind an industry – largely funded by Silicon Valley billionaires – which feeds off the gullibility of rich investors and death-phobic consumers. The antidotes: expensive drugs, stem cell therapy, gene therapy and intermittent fasting. He draws upon real scientific evidence to cut through the nonsense and to make a serious case for why longevity is a delusion, and why this industry is unlikely to find a real solution to the inevitability of ageing.This narrative takes O’Mahony’s investigation deep into the world of longevity ‘experts’ as he attends their conferences and meets these infamous figures in their natural habitats. He has a gift for witty caricatures, stunning anecdotes and countering misinformation with clarity, reason and research. This is investigative writing at its best.Praise for Can Medicine Be Cured?‘An exceptionally strong polemic – one that might even persuade Miley Cyrus to start eating wheat again’ Sunday Business Post‘A book on health that everyone should read this year... A fascinating read for patients, medics and anyone who cares’ Sunday Independent (Dublin)'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times

We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends and beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors and nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity and fed through a tube after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions. This is the starting point of Seamus O''Mahoney''s thoughtful, moving and unforgettable book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more public, with celebrities writing detailed memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of dying and made a good death increasingly difficult to achieve.

We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends and beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors and nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity and fed through a tube after a long series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions. This is the starting point of Seamus O'Mahoney's thoughtful, moving and unforgettable book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more public, with celebrities writing detailed memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of dying and made a good death increasingly difficult to achieve.

A fierce, honest, elegant and often hilarious debunking of the great fallacies that drive modern medicine. By the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now. Seamus O''Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be ''conquered'' ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can''t easily be measured, like compassion. ''A deeply fascinating and rousing book'' Mail on Sunday. ''What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O''Mahony''s scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty'' The Times.

A brilliantly witty book about the intertwined lives of psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, surgeon Wilfred Trotter and the guru of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.Welsh-born psychoanalyst Ernest Jones was Sigmund Freud''s closest associate and most fervent disciple. Clever, self-confident and intensely ambitious, Jones promoted psychoanalysis as a kind of secular religion. Meanwhile, his intimate friend Wilfred Trotter – a celebrated surgeon who saved the life of George V, and who took on Freud as a patient during his London exile – refused to yield to the seductions of the new Freudianism. A quintessentially English figure, Trotter was unimpressed by slick medical careerists, distrusted grand theories and lacked pomposity and self-regard.From the first psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg in 1908 to the illness of King George in the late 1920s and the meeting of Freud and Trotter in 1939, Seamus O''Mahony tells the story of these three figures and their intertwined lives with his customary wit and erudition. Not only the story of the development of psychoanalysis, this is a book about the sexual obsessions of intellectual and bohemian circles in London, Cambridge and Vienna, of Bloomsbury, of doctors in pursuit of wealth and fame. It covers a pivotal thirty years in European history, and reveals how and why the writings of a failed neurologist from Vienna became so influential.

A brilliantly witty book about the intertwined lives of psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, surgeon Wilfred Trotter and the guru of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.Welsh-born psychoanalyst Ernest Jones was Sigmund Freud's closest associate and most fervent disciple. Clever, self-confident and intensely ambitious, Jones promoted psychoanalysis as a kind of secular religion. Meanwhile, his intimate friend Wilfred Trotter – a celebrated surgeon who saved the life of George V, and who took on Freud as a patient during his London exile – refused to yield to the seductions of the new Freudianism. A quintessentially English figure, Trotter was unimpressed by slick medical careerists, distrusted grand theories and lacked pomposity and self-regard.From the first psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg in 1908 to the illness of King George in the late 1920s and the meeting of Freud and Trotter in 1939, Seamus O'Mahony tells the story of these three figures and their intertwined lives with his customary wit and erudition. Not only the story of the development of psychoanalysis, this is a book about the sexual obsessions of intellectual and bohemian circles in London, Cambridge and Vienna, of Bloomsbury, of doctors in pursuit of wealth and fame. It covers a pivotal thirty years in European history, and reveals how and why the writings of a failed neurologist from Vienna became so influential.

Life and death in a modern hospital, from Seamus O'Mahony, the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now and Can Medicine Be Cured?Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the 'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence.Absurd general emails, vain and self-promoting specialists, the relentless parade of self-destructive drinkers and drug users, the comical expectations of baffled patients: this is not a conventional medical memoir, but the collective biography of one of our great modern institutions – the general hospital – through the eyes of a brilliant writer, who happens to be a doctor.