I Didn’t Know Squat about Cancer
Cancer (in general) and oral cancer were certainly topics that I learned about in our medical/dental training 18 years ago, but after reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, I realized just how little I actually knew. To tell the truth, after reading the book, I now have a mere glimpse into the complex set of 100+ diseases that we call cancer. A quick reassurance: this article does NOT contain any gross pictures that might upset readers. The History of Cancer as a Readable Story I first learned of this book as recommended reading on the Rationally Speaking podcast sometime in 2016, and I picked it up at Barnes & Noble , along with Dr. Mukherjee's newer book The Gene: an Intimate History, which I'm now starting. I've been interested in the topic of cancer for a couple years from being involved with the Skeptical movement that debunks pseudoscience and quackery in dentistry and medicine. Sadly, there is a lot of woo and pseudo-medicine around cancer for many reasons, and I'll address those towards the end of this article. The book, published in 2011, won the Pulitzer Prize (among many other awards) and was made into a PBS mini-series, which I haven't watched yet; it's supposed to be quite good. The easiest way to sum it up (for those who prefer the tl;dr version) is quoted here from the back of the paperback edition: The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. The story of cancer [...]
