Seamus O’Mahony was born in Cork in 1960. He studied medicine at University College Cork, graduating in 1983. He worked for many years in the NHS, returning to Cork in 2001, where he worked as a consultant gastroenterologist and clinical professor until February 2020.
His first book The Way We Die Now won the British Medical Association’s council chair’s choice award in 2017. His second book Can Medicine be Cured? was published in 2019, and his latest book The Ministry of Bodies was published by Head of Zeus in March 2021. He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books and the Medical Independent. He has written also for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Saturday Evening Post. He is a member of the Lancet commission on “The Value of Death” and is visiting professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London.