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Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer Hardcover – November 16, 2010

by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Author)

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The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.”

The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

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November 16, 2010
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9781439107959
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Li had stumbled on a deep and fundamental principle of oncology: cancer needed to be systemically treated long after every visible sign of it had vanished.
Highlighted by 2,728 Kindle readers
Cancer cells can grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves.
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Leukemia was a malignant proliferation of white cells in the blood. It was cancer in a molten, liquid form.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: "In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease. --Lynette Mong

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Mukherjee's debut book is a sweeping epic of obsession, brilliant researchers, dramatic new treatments, euphoric success and tragic failure, and the relentless battle by scientists and patients alike against an equally relentless, wily, and elusive enemy. From the first chemotherapy developed from textile dyes to the possibilities emerging from our understanding of cancer cells, Mukherjee shapes a massive amount of history into a coherent story with a roller-coaster trajectory: the discovery of a new treatment--surgery, radiation, chemotherapy--followed by the notion that if a little is good, more must be better, ending in disfiguring radical mastectomy and multidrug chemo so toxic the treatment ended up being almost worse than the disease. The first part of the book is driven by the obsession of Sidney Farber and philanthropist Mary Lasker to find a unitary cure for all cancers. (Farber developed the first successful chemotherapy for childhood leukemia.) The last and most exciting part is driven by the race of brilliant, maverick scientists to understand how cells become cancerous. Each new discovery was small, but as Mukherjee, a Columbia professor of medicine, writes, "Incremental advances can add up to transformative changes." Mukherjee's formidable intelligence and compassion produce a stunning account of the effort to disrobe the "emperor of maladies." (Nov.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Apparently researching, treating, and teaching about cancer isn’t enough of a challenge for Columbia University cancer specialist Mukherjee. He was also moved to write a biography of a disease whose name, for millennia, could not be uttered. The eminently readable result is a weighty tale of an enigma that has remained outside the grasp of both the people who endeavored to know it and those who would prefer never to have become acquainted with it. An unauthorized biography told through the voices of people who have lived, toiled, and, yes, died under cancer’s inexorable watch. Mukherjee recounts cancer’s first known literary reference—hence its birth, so to speak—in the teachings of the Egyptian physician Imhotep in the twenty-fifth century BCE, in which it is clear that Imhotep possessed no tools with which to treat what appears to be breast cancer. His cryptic note under “Therapy:” “There is none.” Throughout cancer’s subsequent years, many more physicians and scientists with names both familiar and obscure attempted and occasionally succeeded in deciphering or unlocking keys to many of the disease’s mysteries. Alas, this is not a posthumous biography, but it is nonetheless a surprisingly accessible and encouraging narrative. --Donna Chavez

Review

“It’s time to welcome a new star in the constellation of great writer-doctors. With this fat, enthralling, juicy, scholarly, wonderfully written history of cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee vaults into that exalted company, inviting comparisons to ... Lewis Thomas and ... Stephen Jay Gould.”—Washington Post

"It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion. The Emperor of All Maladies is an extraordinary achievement.”—The New Yorker

“A compulsively readable, surprisingly uplifting and vivid tale.”—O, the Oprah Magazine

"With this riveting and moving book, Siddhartha Mukherjee joins the first rank of those rare doctor-authors who can wield a pen as gracefully as a scalpel: Jerome Groopman, Atul Gawande, Richard Selzer. A magisterial, wise, and deeply human piece of writing."--Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost and Bury the Chains

“An elegant … tour de force. The Emperor of All Maladies reads like a novel … but it deals with real people and real successes, as well as with the many false notions and false leads. Not only will the book bring cancer research and cancer biology to the lay public, it will help attract young researchers to a field that is at once exciting and heart wrenching ... and important.”-- Donald Berry, Ph.D., Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas

“Sid Mukherjee’s book is a pleasure to read, if that is the right word. Cancer today is widely regarded as the worst of all the diseases from which one might suffer -- if only because it is fast becoming the most common. Dr. Mukherjee explains how this perception came about, how cancer has been regarded across the years and what is now being done to treat its protean forms. His book is the clearest account I have read on this subject. With The Emperor of All Maladies, he joins that small fraternity of practicing doctors who can not just talk about their profession but write about it.”--Tony Judt, author of Postwar and Ill Fares the Land

“Siddhartha Mukherjee has done something that should not have been possible: he has managed, at once, to write an authoritative history of cancer for the general reader, while always keeping the experiences of cancer patients in his heart and in his narrative. At once learned and skeptical, unsentimental and humane, The Emperor of all Maladies is that rarest of things--a noble book.”--David Rieff, author of Swimming in a Sea of Death

“The Emperor of All Maladies beautifully describes the nature of cancer from a patient’s perspective and how basic research has opened the door to understanding this disease.” --Bert Vogelstein, Director, Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins University

“A labor of love … as comprehensive as possible.”--George Canellos, M.D., William Rosenberg Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

“Rarely have the science and poetry of illness been so elegantly braided together as they are in this erudite, engrossing, kind book. Mukherjee's clinical wisdom never erases the personal tragedies which are its occasion; indeed, he locates with meticulous clarity and profound compassion the beautiful hope buried in cancer's ravages.”--Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon

About the Author

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction; and The Laws of Medicine. He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Visit his website at: SiddharthaMukherjee.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Emperor of all Maladies

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1439107955
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; 1st edition (November 16, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781439107959
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1439107959
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 1 year and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1240L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.96 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 2 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #25,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #16 in Oncology (Books)
- #27 in History of Medicine (Books)
- #55 in Medical Professional Biographies

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Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbytarian Hospital. A former Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford (where he received a PhD studying cancer-causing viruses) and from Harvard Medical School. His laboratory focuses on discovering new cancer drugs using innovative biological methods. Mukherjee trained in cancer medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School and was on the staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has published articles and commentary in such journals as Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Neuron and the Journal of Clinical Investigation and in publications such as the New York Times and the New Republic. His work was nominated for Best American Science Writing, 2000 (edited by James Gleick). He lives in Boston and New York with his wife, Sarah Sze, an artist, and with his daughter, Leela.

His author website is www.siddharthamukherjee.me

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A Literary Achievement of Science

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 1, 2013

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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

"The Emperor of All Maladies" is a literary achievement of science. It's an enlightening journey through the history of cancer through the eyes of a coming-of-age oncologist. A beautifully written book that treats this complex topic of cancer with the utmost care and respect while providing the reader valuable insights into the scientific quest to eradicate or control this insidious disease. This outstanding 608-page book is broken out into six major parts: 1. "Of blacke cholor, without boyling", 2. An Impatient War, 3. "Will you turn me out if I can't get better?", 4. Prevention is the Cure, 5. "A Distorted Version of our Normal Selves", and 6. The Fruits of Long Endeavors.

Positives:
1. Outstanding accomplishment of literary science. Extensive research of cancer and conveyed to the masses in an enlightening readable fashion. Kudos!
2. Engaging and humane prose.
3. What sets this book apart is the author's ability to interweave human stories into the biography of cancer thus achieving a perfect balance of humanity and science.
4. Great facts and fascinating scientific tidbits about cancer throughout this book.
5. Cancer...what it is, and the never ending scientific quest to eradicate or control it.
6. Cancer has many manifestations. This book covers many of them through the eyes of the patients, scientists and doctors. Leukemia and breast cancer, do get special attention.
7. Innate ability of Dr. Mukherjee to provide details with panache.
8. The history of the drugs developed to combat the many manifestations of cancer. The history of the agencies, and support groups. The scientists behind the design, development and deployment of the drugs.
9. Great quotes, "Cancer thus exploits the fundamental logic of evolution unlike any other illness. If we, as a species, are the ultimate product of Darwinian selection, then so, too, is this incredible disease that lurks inside us".
10. A look into the history of ancient diseases. The progression (not always in a straight line either) of science as it relates to treating diseases. The key discoveries that were instrumental to progress, anesthesia as an example. The discovery of radium in 1902.
11. The history of organizations launched to fund research. Special mention to the tireless efforts of Mary Woodard Lasker and Sidney Farber.
12. Conducting clinical research. The trials and tribulations. The various treatments and effects. A lot of focus on chemotherapy. The multidrug concoctions. The reality of the results. The tamoxifen trial.
13. The causes of cancer. The various theories. As an example a look into the somatic mutation hypothesis of cancer.
14. The quest to understand the biological behavior of cancer before going on an all out attack. Fascinating stuff.
15. The quest to prevent diseases. Many examples of historical cases: the "chimney-sweepers' cancer, tobacco, malaria, to name a few. Find out the extreme experiment that put one scientist's own life at risk.
16. The history behind screening trials. Pap smears, mammography, the findings, and the lessons learned.
17. The insidious disease...AIDS. Retroviruses.
18. The link between chromosomal changes and cancer. The causes.
19. Proto-oncogenes. "Cancer was intrinsically loaded in our genome, awaiting activation". The first cogent and comprehensive theory of carcinogenesis.
20. Understanding the progression of cancer. "Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves."
21. The six rules that explain core behavior of more than a hundred types of tumors.
22. The three new Achilles' heels of cancer. The three essential ingredients for a targeted therapy for cancer.
23. The current biological and societal challenges of cancer. The pathway disease.
24. Excellent links to notes.
25. The inclusion of a glossary and bibliography.

Negatives:
1. At over 600 pages, it does require an investment in time. Thankfully, it's time well invested.
2. Lack of charts and illustrations would have added value. Could have been added to appendices to avoid disrupting elegant prose.
3. It can be an emotional read sometimes as the reader will find themselves invested in the lives of so many people...let's face it, we are talking about dealing with cancer.
4. Some readers will get lost among the many and recurring storylines.
5. The photographs would have added more value if they would have been inserted in the context of the narrative instead of a separate appendix.

In summary, this is an outstanding and important book. What sets this book apart is Dr. Mukherjee's ability to weave multiple storylines into a fascinating narrative about the history of cancer with just the right touch of humanity. This was an ambitious book and I can only imagine how daunting a quest this was but the author succeeds and as a result we the readers benefit from the knowledge and wisdom. I can't recommend it enough!

Further suggestions: " The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks " by Rebecca Skloot, " The Secret History of the War on Cancer " by Devra Davis, " One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins (Science Masters Series) " by Robert A. Weinberg, " Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer ", " The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code " by Sam Kean, and " Cancer Ward " by Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

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The Burden, The Mass, Onkos

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 13, 2010

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**I am pleased that Dr. Mukherjee has won the Pulitzer prize in general non fiction for this book, 4-18-11

In the United States one in three women and one in two men will develop cancer in their lifetime. Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee, a medical oncologist, has written a definitive history of cancer. It may be one of the best medical books I have read. Complex but simple in terms of understanding. A timeline of a disease and those who waged the wars. In 1600 BC the first case of probable breast cancer was documented. In the thousands of years since, the Greek word, 'onkos', meaning mass or burden, has become the disease of our time. Cancer. The title of the book, is "a quote from a 19Th century physician" Dr Mukherjee had found inscribed in a library book that "cancer is the emperor of all maladies, the king of our terrors".

As a health care professional and as a woman who is six years post breast cancer, Cancer has played a big part in my life. I used to walk by the Oncology clinic, and quicken my pace. I used to give chemotherapy to my patients, before it was discovered that the chemo was so toxic that it needed to be made under sterile conditions and given by professionals who specialized in Oncology. Dr Mukherjee, wisely discusses cancer in the context of patients, those of us who suffer. After all it is because of the patients, the people who have gone before us, who have contracted some form of cancer, they are the base of this science.

Dr Mukherjee started his immersion in cancer medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He relates the beginning of the study of ALL, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, by Dr Sidney Farber in 1947. Dr Farber, a pathologist at the time decided to change his focus and start caring for patients. He was given a medication to trial for ALL, and though most of his patients died, some survived to remission. This opened his world and with the help of Mary Lasker, and Charles E Dana, philanthropists, they opened one of the first clinics that specialized in cancer care and research, The Dana Farber Cancer Center. Dr Mukherjee gives us the timeline of ALL and lymphomas and the medications that turned into chemotherapy. The development of specific care for blood cancers and the emergence of AIDS and patient activism. He discusses the surgery for breast cancer. It was thought that the more radical the surgery the better the outcomes. We now know that lumpectomies have an excellent outcome. But, women before me had a radical removal of breast, chest tissue, lymph nodes and sometimes ribs. The lesson learned is that breast cancer is very curable now and all those men and women, the patients who suffered, gave us the answers and cancer care has moved on.

The onslaught of chemotherapies changed the face of cancer, and the 1970's served us well. In 1986 the first outcomes of cancer care were measured. Tobacco emerged as an addiction and soon lung cancer was a leading cause of death. Presidential Commissions ensued, politics entered the world of cancer, the war against cancer and the war against smoking. The Pap smear was developed, and prevention came to the fore. The two sides of cancer, the researchers and the physicians at the bedside, who often thought never the twain shall meet, recognized the importance of research to bedside.

The story of the boy 'Jimmy' from New Sweden, Maine, became the face of childhood cancer. The Jimmy Fund, a Boston Red Sox charity in Boston, is still going strong today. 'Jimmy' opened the door to the public for the need for money and research, and care for those with cancer. We follow Dr Mukherjee with one of his first patients, Carla, from her diagnosis through her treatment. He has given a face to cancer. We all know someone with cancer, those who survived and those who did not. Cancer prevention is now the wave of the future.

"Cancer is and may always be part of the burden we carry with us," says Dr Mukherjee. He has now written a "biography of cancer" for us, those without special medical knowledge. However, he does go astray in some discussions such as genetics. I have an excellent medical background, and found I was floundering at times. As I discovered,and Dr. Mukherjee agrees, our patients are our heroes. They/we withstand the horrors of cancer, and the horrific, sometimes deadly treatments. The stories of his patients make us weep, and the complex decision making about their care make him the most caring of physicians.

The 'quest for the cure' is the basis of all science and research, and Dr Mukherjee has written a superb tome in language that we can all attempt to understand. The biography of Cancer. Cancer may always be with us,Dr Mukherjee hopes that we outwit this devil and survive.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 11-13-10

Jimmy Fund of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, The (MA) (Images of America)

Early Detection: Women, Cancer, and Awareness Campaigns in the Twentieth-Century United States

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Top reviews from other countries

Ashok Krishna

An Almost Definitive Read on Cancer

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on January 13, 2021

Verified Purchase

My first introduction to the dreaded disease of cancer was through movies, where the hero bleeds through his nose, wraps a shawl and goes around with unshaven face, singing sad songs about his plight. My mother’s narrations about her elder sister’s traumatic experience with breast cancer and resultant mastectomy at a young age didn’t make much of an impact on me. As I grew up, there were so many characters with cancer in so many movies that the word cancer itself started to feel like those foreign locations that the lead characters go to for their duets – exotic, intriguing, yet faraway, having nothing to do with me. But as I matured into adulthood, I started seeing relatives, families of friends and colleagues bear the brunt of this ominous disease. My brief volunteering with an NGO that works for cancer patients brought me face to face with the seriousness of this scourge of humans. Young children suffering from leukemia, men in their early twenties fighting lung cancer caused by smoking, elderly people disfigured by throat cancer due to tobacco use - cancer was no longer exotic and faraway. It was close and gross.

When recently someone near and dear was diagnosed with cancer, I felt my curiosity piqued. I was looking for resources to learn more about this disease and do what I can to spread awareness. That’s how I found this book. And, what a worthy primer this turned out to be!

Cancer is not a modern illness. Its ancientness parallels that of our own. For millennia, people have suffered from and succumbed to cancer. But what makes this dreaded disease unique is its ability to evolve at the same rate as we do. Every time we find a cure and hope to kill this disease forever, cancer evolves and moves the bull’s eye. To borrow an idea from the author, imagine an Achilles whose vulnerability shifts someplace else, just as you target an arrow at his heel.

All those centuries of painstaking research has taught us one thing – this disease emerges from within. While external agents – like viruses and carcinogens - play a crucial role in waking this demon from its slumber, cancer is something internalized. It is our own body cells gone rogue, disobeying the lifecycle of birth-growth-decline. In a cruel twist of fate, our own body cells, nano-representations of our own selves, find a mutated vigor for ‘life’, start proliferating so profusely that they end up killing us, their collective image. Killing a harmful virus or bacteria has been relatively easier, because they have definite shape, purpose and, especially, are apart from us. But cancer is a part of us, our own cells, our genes, DNAs gone rogue. Not just that. Each of these mutations takes its own unique form as there are individuals. Cancer isn’t one single disease to find a cure against. It is a bunch of mutations, the perverted race of cells to proliferate and spread all over.

This book taught me those things in an intense way. Starting from the earliest mentions of this disease in history, nearly 2500 years ago, to the latest development in the field of oncology, this book tries to light up a very vast area. And, it succeeds too. The tug of war between cancer and science, the misunderstandings, poorly designed treatments, lessons learnt, sacrifices by patients as well as physicians, their tenacity in the face of adversity, emotional / physical reliefs brought by discovery of cures, relapses and remissions, egos and ebullience of the people involved, this book tells it all. If you are looking to learn what cancer is and what a devastating trail it has left all through the annals of mankind, then this is a book you must start with. The sheer effort and research that fills these pages is astounding. Dr. Mukherjee has put his heart and soul into this book.

The book is comprehensive but not complete though. For example, the book doesn’t dwell into ovarian cancer, something that I was so keen to learn about. The book doesn’t provide any advice on how to prevent cancer, if at all it is possible, or what kinds of lifestyles are prone to the risk of it. But, of course, the good doctor promptly justifies his reasons in the annexures.

This book doesn’t tell you everything that you would like to know about cancer. But it will tell you all the basics that you need to know about it. If you are pursuing the subject with curiosity, this is a good book to begin with. Not an easy read, but definitely worth the time.

As I finished reading and sat staring at the covers, I had this strange emotion – in their traits of reproducing profusely, migrating to wherever possible, reshaping the landscape of their destination (organ), and increasing ability to defy death that results in the ultimate demise of the host organism, isn’t cancer quite akin to us humans? Are cancer cells the microcosmic parallels to what we humans are to the macrocosm, i.e., the Universe?!

Who knows?! May be, we are!

31 people found this helpful

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Outstanding

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 12, 2020

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My 10 year old daughter has Leukaemia. This book has fascinated me. I have found it both deeply disturbing and strangely comforting at the same time. It is beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, which considering the subject matter, somewhat surprised me. This is no beach read, but will draw you in and leave you feeling optimistic and incredibly grateful to the doctors, researchers and brave people who dared to push the boundaries in the search for a cure. Some impressively tenacious people have got us to where we are now and how they came to this point is utterly mind-blowing.

9 people found this helpful

Alasdair Fraser

Fascinating Review

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 15, 2021

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This is an approachable and sympathetic look at the development and progression of cancer therapies from the earliest recorded cases through to the state of the art in 2011. It is well written and referenced, and is very useful from a teaching perspective, explaining complex concepts in a clear way using effective analogies. It is well worth reading by any scientist or clinician with an interest in cancer.
My only slight criticism is that it is very US-centric, skating over the huge influence UK, European and Asian science had on cancer diagnosis and treatment. And as an immunologist I would have liked more on the transformative effects immunotherapy has had on targeted cancer treatment. However I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the anatomy, history and treatment of cancer.

2 people found this helpful

DS

Brilliantly scary masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 27, 2018

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No words can do justice to the raw emotions that pour out through this masterpiece. The reader is taken on a roller coaster ride through the annals of history as mankind struggles against the primordial malady of cancer, seemingly outwitting it at multiple junctures, only to be sternly reminded of the brilliance of natural evolution of life in its most naked and dangerous form- A multicellular beast of a disease with mol Cupar foundations in a single celled anomaly.

8 people found this helpful

autodidact

Informative Historical Account of Cancer Treatment

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 10, 2014

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I am indebted to a reviewer (Sinohey) of 'The Cancer Chronicles' for pointing me to this book. Cancer is an illness which every one of us is likely to come into contact with; certainly, several close relatives of mine have died of one form or other of the disease and other (very close) relatives have been treated successfully, whilst another is undergoing treatment.

This book does an excellent job, as far as my knowledge extends, in providing a historical guide to the ways in which cancer has been treated and the growing understanding of what cancer actually is. The two have not necessarily gone hand in hand, and it is comparatively recently that the understanding of the biology of cancer has produced targeted treatments.

The flip side of that understanding, though, is that it is quite likely there will never be a magic 'cure' for cancer. In some ways, as the book explains, everyone's cancer at the genetic level is unique, though it appears there are certain genes which are likely to be drivers of cancer. But with an aging population, cancer may be, like wrinkles, a feature of old age. The good news is that cancers that affect the young have been the ones where the treatment has been most effective.

Some of the chapters in the book that deal with the biology of cancer at the chromosome level are a little hard going for a non-biologist. A diagram may have been useful in places. But, ultimately, the book is worth the effort and the information within it should help dispel some of the fear and dread that surrounds mention of the disease.

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