ISBN:
B07YYH7RZX
Title: The First Cell Pdf And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last
A world-class oncologist's devastating and deeply personal examination of cancer
We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet - a few innovations notwithstanding - a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was 50 years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must.
A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.
Important message obscured by less than coherent writing The author makes a very good case for the concise recommendation to shift funding for cancer research toward early detection rather than late treatment. Unfortunately the basis for this well thought out recommendation is clouded over by extraneous and anecdotal personal stories of cancer patients experience of suffering the ravages of treatment and disease progression. The author also diminishes the validity of her message by an often haphazard presentation of rationale and research supporting her message.A good, strong editor could have made this book, and the changes she advocates for, much more logically organized and therefore far more persuasive. There’s an important message here, but it’s impact is short changed by the author’s writing style and organization.First and last Some may think that this book is unduly pessimistic, but others may welcome the frank exposition on how cancer treatment has fared over the past 50 years. There’s been great advances in technology and chemical treatment, but Raza points out that these are new ways of applying the old treatments for cancer. ‘Using chemotherapy, immune therapy, and stem cell transplant to cure cancer…is like beating the dog with a baseball bat to get rid of its fleas’, Raza says. Raza is conscious of likely objections to her book for ignoring the 68% of cancers that are appear to be curable today; but she claims that these are being accomplished with surgery-chemoradiation developed decades ago. She is pressing for really new innovations. For that, she believes that we have to abandon the existing strategies, using existing discovery platforms. In this book, Raza invites the reader into the lives of numerous cancer patients, including her husband, Harvey, and their daughter’s GBF (gay best friend), Andrew. Through each of these lives – and deaths, Raza explains the complexity and waywardness not just of the disease, but the medical advice the patients received. Readers who are or have been fighting cancer will probably find many of these tales familiar. Those who are not afflicted may like to have a glimpse of an enemy who will pounce for sure – if we live long enough.New paradigms needed It is a beautifully written, easily understandable, emotionally stirring, and yet soundly- supplemented -with -scientific -data, book. One gets a lot of basic information about cancer as a disease, how it develops and affects its victims, it’s current and past treatment strategies and challenges and best of all select patients’ and their care givers’ personal accounts of how they feel, face and handle this harrowing disease. Azra’s main thrust is of course on how some of the cancer treatment and cure finding strategies have stagnated over the years or decades and need fresh foci and fresh methodologies to arrive at effective, substantial results. There have been newer and effective strategies and researches but according to her they have not resulted in long term ultimate cures. Her recommendations then follow including her description of the tissue repository which she has collected and maintained for last three decades and which can be a valuable resource for cancer cure-finding research. In my opinion the book is not only valueable from the point of view of cancer research but also for its literary beauty in how it is written and the data presented. I leave the rest to the reader but in conclusion: it’s a strong and loving book. Strong in its challenge to the cancer research community and loving in its invitation to do better for the sake of suffering patients. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and Azra, congratulations for producing this beautiful thing. I strongly recommend it to everybody to read, not just doctors, scientists or cancer researchers who also do, I hope
Tags: B07YYH7RZX pdf,The First Cell pdf,And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last pdf,,Azra Raza, Sheherzad Raza Preisler, Recorded Books,The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last,Recorded Books,B07YYH7RZX
SumantriJaya535