I think this is an appropriate post for World cancer Day.
I purchased the book couple of years back in the Book Fair and it languished in my book shelf (rather on my bed) as I found one excuse after another to read it. But with my mother not well, I have been going back and forth between Delhi and Chennai and the book was perfect for the airplane.
The emperor of all maladies is of course Cancer and Siddhartha Mukherjee takes us through a journey spanning centuries. The journey starts with leukemia and the discovery of the first set of chemotherapeutics- a starring role is played by Yellapragada Subbarow whom I know as the person behind Fiske-Subbarow method for estimating phosphate (I spent my Ph.D. days measuring phosphate released from ATP hydrolysis using this very technique). Then there was of course Gertrude Elion who synthesized a huge number of drugs for treatment of leukemia and for which she was awarded Nobel Prize. The landscape shifts to sold tumors, especially breast cancer. The earliest treatments were radical surgery that eventually gave way to surgery augmented with chemotherapy. Discovery of X-rays by Roentgen paved the way for radiation treatment to destroy tumors.
What causes cancer? Carcinogens versus virus theory. And finally, the discovery of proto-oncogenes or genes present within our genome that help the cell to grow and divide. When these become rogue due to mutations or changes in sequences, they lead to the transformation of a normal cell into a cancer cell.
But stuck me most as I read through the book was the stellar role played by individuals- doctors, professional fund raisers, activists- in this journey. They pushed the political establishment (Government) to not only establish/provide funds for cancer research but also pushed for prevention as well as cure. This is something that we do not see in India. The nearest example would be polio campaign that successive governments pushed for and we now have been declared polio-free. But the kind of activism that Mary Lasker and Sidney Farber pushed or the campaign that occurred during AIDS epidemic (something that stuck me when I read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts) is not something we see in India. I do not see celebrities, newspapers, television, scientists doing these kinds of campaign in India. It is not that causes are not taken up- they are taken up and dropped very quickly. There is no sustained campaign. There is no pushing the government. Even during the Nipah virus epidemic in Kerala, there was no sustained campaign to ensure that money is given for research in this area. Ultimately, that hurts the science in India.
I purchased the book couple of years back in the Book Fair and it languished in my book shelf (rather on my bed) as I found one excuse after another to read it. But with my mother not well, I have been going back and forth between Delhi and Chennai and the book was perfect for the airplane.
The emperor of all maladies is of course Cancer and Siddhartha Mukherjee takes us through a journey spanning centuries. The journey starts with leukemia and the discovery of the first set of chemotherapeutics- a starring role is played by Yellapragada Subbarow whom I know as the person behind Fiske-Subbarow method for estimating phosphate (I spent my Ph.D. days measuring phosphate released from ATP hydrolysis using this very technique). Then there was of course Gertrude Elion who synthesized a huge number of drugs for treatment of leukemia and for which she was awarded Nobel Prize. The landscape shifts to sold tumors, especially breast cancer. The earliest treatments were radical surgery that eventually gave way to surgery augmented with chemotherapy. Discovery of X-rays by Roentgen paved the way for radiation treatment to destroy tumors.
What causes cancer? Carcinogens versus virus theory. And finally, the discovery of proto-oncogenes or genes present within our genome that help the cell to grow and divide. When these become rogue due to mutations or changes in sequences, they lead to the transformation of a normal cell into a cancer cell.
But stuck me most as I read through the book was the stellar role played by individuals- doctors, professional fund raisers, activists- in this journey. They pushed the political establishment (Government) to not only establish/provide funds for cancer research but also pushed for prevention as well as cure. This is something that we do not see in India. The nearest example would be polio campaign that successive governments pushed for and we now have been declared polio-free. But the kind of activism that Mary Lasker and Sidney Farber pushed or the campaign that occurred during AIDS epidemic (something that stuck me when I read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts) is not something we see in India. I do not see celebrities, newspapers, television, scientists doing these kinds of campaign in India. It is not that causes are not taken up- they are taken up and dropped very quickly. There is no sustained campaign. There is no pushing the government. Even during the Nipah virus epidemic in Kerala, there was no sustained campaign to ensure that money is given for research in this area. Ultimately, that hurts the science in India.
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