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Last year my middle sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and my youngest sister and I have both survived bouts with breast cancer. Our mother died of lung cancer. But one thing this book taught me is not to be afraid of statistics, especially the government's cancer incidence and mortality rates. You will need to read "The Cancer Chronicles" yourself to see what I mean, but to roughly summarize one specific category: no one really knows for sure how the foods we eat affect our likelihood of getting cancer. There are some strong statistical links such as the one between smoking and lung cancer, but others seem to evaporate under scrutiny such as the supposed link between cell phone usage and brain cancer.
George Johnson, one of my favorite science writers, takes us all the way back to world's oldest definitive diagnosis of a cancer that had invaded the bone of a dinosaur. One of the more interesting discussions in the chapter on 'Jurassic Cancer' is the lack of correlation between body size and cancer. Nor does cancer correlate well with metabolic rate: "Birds, despite their frenzied metabolic rate (a hummingbird's heart can beat more than a thousand times a minute) appear to get very little cancer. If you graph mammalian size against cancer rate there is no telltale sloping line, just a scattering of dots."
This excellent overview of a complex subject took on a very personal meaning to the author, when he learned that his wife, Nancy had "metastatic cancer with an unknown primary." She was later diagnosed with a stage four uterine papillary serous carcinoma, and Johnson takes us on a tour of the circles of hell that constitute modern-day cancer treatment. Although his wife eventually recovered, his brother was the next to be diagnosed with cancer: squamous cell carcinoma.
In spite of his own personal involvement with this dread disease, the author ends "The Cancer Chronicles" on an upbeat note: "Inside my body, 10 trillion cells (these tiny Maxwell's demons) are in the same inevitable slump toward entropy...There are no instructions. Somehow it all just works. And when it doesn't we rage against the machine."
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (August 27, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0307595145
- ISBN-13: 978-0307595140
- Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 97 customer reviews
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