An oncologist delivers a deeply personal examination of cancer, offering an account of how both medicine and society (mis)treats cancer, how people can do better, and why they must.
When it comes to cancer, Raza knows firsthand how hard it is to reconcile compassion with science and hope with realism ... Fine words, but the reader can be forgiven for feeling that they smack of the same hubris afflicting those molecular biologists, toiling away in the lab with their mouse models ... raises many profound questions but fails to provide clear answers. What is abundantly clear is how deeply Raza cares for her patients. Her diagnosis of the ills from which cancer treatment suffers strikes me as accurate, but her solutions seem infused with the same unrealistic optimism she identifies as the cause of so much suffering. Time will tell, but as they say, America is the land where death is optional.
A welcome argument that we are overdue for a change in the paradigm for treating cancer ... [Raza's] explanation of the science and her brief history of cancer research would be enough to recommend this volume to general readers, but it is in the case histories of cancer patients she has treated, including her late husband’s, where Raza’s eloquence is on full display. With elegant literary references and a compassion that deeply personalizes her interactions with patients and families, she engages readers in a commitment to finding a better way ... Intelligence, empathy, and optimism inform the argument for new research on cancer that could obviate the suffering prevalent today.
