The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery (Vintage) [Kindle Edition]
Author: George Johnson | Language: English | ISBN: B00BO4GR6W | Format: PDF, EPUB
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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 a revolution under way—an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease.
Deftly excavating and illuminating decades of investigation and analysis, he reveals what we know and don’t know about cancer, showing why a cure remains such a slippery concept. We follow him as he combs through the realms of epidemiology, clinical trials, laboratory experiments, and scientific hypotheses—rooted in every discipline from evolutionary biology to game theory and physics. Cogently extracting fact from a towering canon of myth and hype, he describes 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, jujitsu-like, against the body.
Throughout his pursuit, Johnson clarifies the human experience of cancer with elegiac grace, bearing witness to the punishing gauntlet of consultations, surgeries, targeted therapies, and other treatments. He finds compassion, solace, and community among a vast network of patients and professionals committed to the fight and wrestles to comprehend the cruel randomness cancer metes out in his own family. For anyone whose life has been affected by cancer and has found themselves asking why?, this book provides a new understanding. In good company with the works of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese, The Cancer Chronicles is endlessly surprising and as radiant in its prose as it is authoritative in its eye-opening science.
- File Size: 1770 KB
- Print Length: 304 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (August 27, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00BO4GR6W
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,483 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #27 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Oncology > Cancer
- #27 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Cancer
- #38 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology
Science-writer George Johnson and his wife heard three words that changed their lives - "you've got cancer" - when she was diagnosed with a metastatic uterine form of the disease. As a result, Johnson embarked on a quest to learn everything he could about cancer and has written an interesting overview of what is known, which turns out to be less than you might hope. Cancer is not one disease but many and has been around a long time, and evidence of different cancers have even been found in dinosaur fossils. In fact, it has been with mankind as long as we've been around, but if it seems to be increasing it's only because we're living longer. With some cruel exceptions, cancer is mostly a disease of older people but, beyond age, the only other reliable factors that can be said to cause cancer are smoking and obesity.
If you're looking for a positive, upbeat, "let's beat Cancer!" kind of book, this probably isn't it. Johnson says that while we've made significant strides, our understanding of why it happens and how to treat it still has a long way to go. He points out that studies are frequently flawed and inconclusive, and recommendations that eating fruits and vegetables or any particular food will help prevent cancer do not hold up under more rigorous testing. There is some correlation that exercise and maintaining a healthy body and diet helps, but the benefits are often small and disputed. And as he discusses the effects of drinking water tainted with chemical pollutants he illustrates very well why it is so difficult to *prove* causation. Even if a specific chemical or activity can be linked to a 30% increase in cancer (which sounds very dramatic), if your odds were only 1.2% in the beginning it only translates to new odds of 1.
I was eager to read this book because, as a surgeon, I am always searching for new information,fresh ideas and innovative techniques in the management of cancer.
I read the 280+ pages of The Cancer Chronicles hoping maybe to discover a new treatment, or a novel approach or cutting edge therapy to combat this vicious disease that has plagued all living creatures since life began on earth. Tumors have been found in fossils of dinosaurs.
Sadly I found nothing new; the promised "explosive new ideas" touted by the publicity hype were neither new nor explosive, but just fizzled. Most of it was common routine knowledge in the medical field. On page 17, I learned that "mammals appear to get more cancer than reptiles or fish. Domesticated animals seem to get more cancer than their cousins in the wild. And people get the most cancer of all." It is a great piece of information with which to stomp your friends at trivia.
Even some information was inaccurate; the author confuses the function of free radicals with antioxidants.
The book touches on the genesis of cancer, mostly unknown except for a few causative relationships such as smoking and environmental hazards (Eg. asbestos) associated with mainly with lung cancers. It correctly challenges the myths of unproven causal links between cancer, the environment or diet. Many studies are inconclusive, flawed or biased.
Screening tests like mammograms, PSA and CA 125 are not specific or sensitive enough for an absolute diagnosis and often result in a false positive, leading to unnecessary, often radical, treatment. Ideally, early diagnosis and treatment lead to cure; best examples of screening are Pap smears and colonoscopy that can detect pre-cancerous lesions and allow early therapy.
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