I bought the book and the DVD combination from PBS. Right now I am reading the 500 page paperback, and I think it’s quite interesting.
Later, the author takes the tobacco industry to task for selling a nicotine delivery method. What’s worse, the tobacco firms are now selling cigarettes in other countries and the people are getting lung and other cancers.
Prevention
The researchers soon came to the conclusion that the best way to cure cancer was prevention.
George Papanicolaou was a doctor from Greece who got a job studying the menstrual cycle of the guinea pig. He examined cells, and later examined cells from his volunteer wife. Much later he found that he could determine if human cervical cells were normal or abnormally precancerous. He called this test the Pap smear.
STAMP
During chemotherapy, the first organ to suffer is the bone marrow, which makes the blood. Leukemia was cured by chemotherapy on the bone marrow. But other tumors needed a much higher dose of chemotherapy, but that would kill the bone marrow. So it was proposed to withdraw the blood producing cells from the bone marrow and freeze them. Then treat the tumor(s) with mega doses of chemotherapy, then put the frozen cells back into the body, restoring the bone marrow. This procedure was very expensive and the health insurance companies refused to pay, saying it was investigative and experimental. Over a period of years, it was found that the procedure was ineffective and very dangerous. The patients didn’t live longer or died from other causes.
I finished reading the book, and I thought it was very interesting, especially cancer from the genetic viewpoint. I highly recommend this book, The Emperor of All Maladies. I have not yet watched the DVD which I purchased at the same time, so I cannot say anything about its quality. But if it follows the book, and since it was made by Ken Burns, I would assume that it is very worthwhile to watch.
