Cover of Untitled on Cancer

Untitled on Cancer

Paul Marks M.D., President Emeritus of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Hospital, attributes the elusive nature of cancer's cure to its inherently anarchic processes. There can be no hope for a miracle cure when defective cells use a myriad of tools to succeed in their relentless assaults. There are many ways cancers get started, and turn healthy cell division and growth into lethal attacks. Cancer cells and their abnormal genes are inherently unstable and so, are able to fight off anything that gets in their way—often a prescribed drug.

Read more

In 1950 the discovery of cancer was all but a death sentence. By 1980, 214 of every 100,000 Americans died from cancer. As late as 1986, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed the less-than-optimistic outlook cancer research, publishing the condemning sentence: "we are losing the war against cancer." In fact, though cancer had not been eliminated, it had begun to be identified for what it is. A highly individualistic disease, variable—a guerrilla cell rather than a marching army. Suddenly science learned how to fight the right war—at ever closer quarters. And at the forefront of the momentous chain of discoveries was Paul Marks.

Chronicling the insights of researchers and doctors around the world and the momentous effects of their pains-taking advances—Marks weaves together the humbling account of how and what we learned about the mechanisms of malignant and abnormal cells that make up every one of us.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 336 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Untitled on Cancer? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Untitled on Cancer. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Emerging Concepts Of Tumor Exosome Mediated Cellcell Communication Shares tumors, neoplasms, cancer
  2. Tumor Shares tumors, neoplasms, cancer
  3. The first cell Shares tumors, neoplasms, cancer
  4. American Cancer Society's Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Methods Shares tumors, neoplasms, cancer

“If you want more of the same (history about cancer), start with these.”

  1. Breast Cancer
  2. Hormones and cancer
  3. Diseases of the breast
  4. Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want You to Know

“If it was the tumors that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Clinical psycho-oncology
  2. Great Secret
  3. Mathematical Oncology 2013
  4. Fundamentals of cancer epidemiology

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. p53: The Gene that Cracked the Cancer Code
  2. A Simple Cure
  3. One in Three: A Son's Journey into the History and Science of Cancer
  4. The Truth in Small Doses: Why We're Losing the War on Cancer-and How to Win It