The Cancer Chronicles
Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science-writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is that a revolution is now under way – an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from.
He combs through the realms of epidemiology, clinical trials, laboratory experiments and scientific hypotheses, to reveal what we know and don’t know about cancer, showing why a cure remains such a slippery concept. His luminous accounts describe tumors that evolve like alien creatures inside the body, paleo-oncologists who uncover petrified tumors clinging to the skeletons of dinosaurs and ancient human ancestors, and the surprising reversals in science’s comprehension of the causes of cancer, with the foods we eat and environmental toxins playing a lesser role. Perhaps most fascinating of all is how cancer borrows natural processes involved in the healing of a wound or the unfolding of a human embryo and turns them against the body.
Throughout his pursuit, Johnson illuminates the human experience with elegiac grace, bearing witness to the punishing gauntlet of consultations, surgeries, targeted therapies and other treatments. Provocative and intellectually vibrant, The Cancer Chronicles will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease – and provide hope for tomorrow and the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's his wife Nancy's grueling fight against a rare and "rabid" uterine cancer that prompts science writer Johnson (The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments) to delve into the efforts to study, treat, and beat what Siddhartha Mukherjee dubbed "The Emperor of All Maladies." This elegant and insightful chronicle is at once intensely personal and meticulously studious, focusing not just on one cancer, but on the evolution of all cancers. He finds it "comforting... knowing that cancer has always been with us, that it is not all our fault, that you can take every precaution and still something in the genetic coils can become unsprung." Cancer, he explains, can be blamed on "factors that have been present for a long time" (the disease beset even prehistoric dinosaurs). In fact, researchers are finding that any one case of cancer may have multiple causes, whether environmental, hereditary, or "elusive bad luck." Cancer, he concludes, "is a phenomenon" that is "mostly random." Yet we are getting a clearer picture of how it works: cancer's "metabolic puzzle" may lie in "how the body stores and uses energy Insulin, estrogen, obesity, cancer all are tied in to the same metabolic knot." This is extraordinary scholarship delivered with an intimate poignancy.
Customer Reviews
Easy to read and full of facts
I recommend this book for anybody who is interested in learning the latest we know about cancer. It's good for anyone but can get quite technical at times.