Gupta recounts medical miracles

A 29-year-old medical resident falls while skiing and ends up submerged for more than an hour in a freezing stream. By the time she gets to the hospital she's been clinically dead for three hours.

A 35-year-old man in Japan falls, hits his head on a rock and lies undiscovered — and unconscious — for 24 days.

A 22-week-old fetus — still in the womb — undergoes surgery for a potentially fatal heart defect.

A 31-year-old doctor lies unresponsive in a hospital bed after surgery on his heart goes awry. For nearly two months, he is brain dead.

These patients and others come to life, literally, in the new book by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the medical journalist and neurosurgeon, titled "Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds."

Gupta, who is turning 40 this month, is chief medical correspondent at CNN, a columnist for Time magazine and a contributor to CBS' "60 Minutes" and "The Evening News with Katie Couric." He is associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and assistant professor at Emory University Hospital, both in Atlanta.

The Michigan-born son of parents from India, Gupta discussed his book, which examines hypothermia, suspended animation, near-death experiences and other pioneering and sometimes controversial topics, in a recent telephone interview.

Q: Of all the books you could have written, why this one?

A: I've always been interested in one of the most basic questions the medical community is forced to answer: When is dead really dead? And how much of that is reversible?

I think there's important lessons in there about medicine, certainly, but also about hope and optimism. How do you decide when you're going to tell a family that there really is no hope? My attitudes toward that have changed as a result of writing this book, talking to the people who have survived, having them look me in the eye, grab me by the shoulder and say, "Doctor, my message to you is this: Don't give up. Don't ever give up."

Q: What are the medical advances and/or changes in attitude that are allowing these cheating-death incidents to happen?