In light of the anticipation of another wave of Covid cases this coming fall and winter and the realization that the virus has yet to recede in the rearview mirror, a look back at Siddhartha Mukherjee’s 2011 book on cancer is not only worthwhile, but timely.

Screenings in April 2020 at the Center for Disease Control’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program declined by over 80 percent compared to that same month in previous years. Following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, many cancer screening centers closed for a period of months, and routine procedures were put off to prioritize Covid patients and reduce risk. The world has paid too little attention to cancer over the last two years. If you are overwhelmed by sad stories, take the book a chapter at a time.The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancerīy Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner, 592 pp., $32) It is a remarkable book with a couple of caveats: If you are looking for information on alternative therapies or practical advice, this is not the place. Cancer is largely a disease of advancing years, so longer lives will predictably bring more cancers. True, cancer mortality started a steady decline in 1995. 'The Emperor' makes clear that the biography is unfinished. Gene-based therapies are likely to accelerate the trend. For more than 20 years, cancer seemed to be winning, but eventually a pattern of continuously improving survival rates began. The United States memorably declared a 'War on Cancer' during the Nixon Administration. A British study showed a couldn't-be-clearer correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, making prevention a viable idea. Chemotherapy was in its experimental infancy. By the end of World War II, surgery worked well to remove tumors, although no one knew which would recur. As germ-borne epidemics were tamed, attention shifted to more long-term illnesses, including cancer.

He weaves together dozens of mini-bios and scores more life slices of researchers, activists, patients, and incidental characters, all participants in the project of figuring out the what, why and how of cancer and its treatments.Ĭancer has been recognized since antiquity, but until the latter 19th century, infectious diseases, reasonably, got most of the attention. He is also an excellent writer with a supple no-lab-notes prose style. Mukherjee is a research oncologist with clinical experience. Like any biography of a long life, there are uneventful stretches, bursts of activity, sadness and loss, good and bad ideas, conflicts and reconciliations. You could rename this book 'A History of the Scientific Understanding and Medical Treatment of Cancer',' but that would inaccurately shout 'textbook.' 'The Emperor of all Maladies' successfully turns its complex and emotionally fraught subject into an engrossing story.

The emperor of all maladies book review