[Book Review] Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

 

It discusses history of cancer cases, science that is known about it, therapies attempted to cure it starting from ancient period. As the cover of the book mentions, it is a biography of cancer from all possible dimensions.

Positives:

-> Evolution of our understanding of the science behind cancer is intriguing.
-> Stories of people who tried to devise therapies to cure, who tried to unlock mystery behind this is interesting. There are countless number of these stories and you are left in awe of the heroic endeavors.
-> It helps us to peek into the science of medicine and biology. As these details are mentioned only in the context of cancer, details are not very deep. Though not very deep, it is interesting nonetheless. 
-> Most touching are the stories of the cancer patients. Reading about people who had to battle this monster and the terrifying pain that it has inflicted upon them is heart wrenching.

Negatives:

-> Author tends to overload the book with too many details. He mentions lot of relatively insignificant research attempts along with the significant ones. He is also tempted to include too many people and their background. This seems distracting at a lot of places.
-> Narration is not chronological. He jumps to discoveries in 1970,80s and suddenly goes back to 1910,20s. He does this at a lot of places and this makes comprehension difficult.
-> Most of  the times writing is verbose.

Comments:

Story of cancer is not just a story of sickness. It is a story of life and death. This is especially true till 1950s before which chemotherapy, X-ray and other drugs were not available, and the only hope of cure was surgery. This made even early stages of cancer extremely fatal.
    Death has been certain for people with cancer until few decades ago. Best they could hope was to prolong their life for a few years, sometimes only for a few months. Reading about those patients and their families is extremely touching.
    Darkness helps us appreciate light, death helps us understand life. Strength of patients and their families in the face of certain death, valiant efforts by doctors and researches to add at least few months of life to the victims is inspiring.
     Fortunately, scientists have made tremendous progress in understanding cancer and this has made very powerful therapeutics available. There are many more which are still fatal, especially in advanced stages.  But many of the cancers can be cured and victims can have a normal life.
    Battle against cancer is certainly one of the most daunting, prolonged and courageous battles humanity had to fight. Slowness of this may be frustrating at times, especially when a person we know is affected by it. It is understandable. But this shouldn't make us overlook the achievements till now. Progress made till now in treating this monster against extra-ordinary odds is testament to the miraculous power of science and fighting spirit of human kind.
     Cancer is almost wired into our biology. It is caused due to mutations driving cell growth hyper actively. Cell division and Cell growth are much needed mechanisms to survive. Small mutations induced into these process can cause cancer. So, it is very unlikely that cancer will ever  be eliminated entirely. But understanding of the science behind the disease has improved dramatically and this gives reason to hope that more effective therapeutics will be available. We may not be able to prevent it completely but we can be optimistic that we will be able to cure it. 
    Present in encouraging, hope the future will be beautiful and no one will go through the ordeal that is cancer for no fault of theirs.

If you are interested in knowing about the disease and don't mind the length of the book, give it a try. You will not regret it.