why are read:"The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last"

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 leukaemia. 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.

Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong professor of medicine and the director of the MDS Center at Columbia University. In addition to publishing widely in basic and clinical cancer research, Raza is also the coeditor of the highly acclaimed website 3QuarksDaily.com. She lives in New York City. Website: https://azraraza.com

Despite the advances by medical science, cancer is still a dominantly killer disease. Some 18 million cancer cases were diagnosed globally in 2018; half the patients died. The American Cancer Society estimates the global burden will soar to 21.7 million new cases and 13 million deaths by 2030. U.S.-based Azra Raza, a highly respected oncologist of Pakistani origin, has been treating cancer for around two decades. Her grouse is that most new drugs add mere months to one’s life, that too at great physical, financial and emotional cost. The reason the war on cancer has reached a stalemate is because doctors are invariably trying to kill the last cell instead of checking the disease at birth. This has to change, and now, says Raza with an evangelist’s passion. This is an honest and deeply moving work from a committed and caring clinician, peppered with literary references, a book that ought to be read by all oncologists, cancer patients and those caring for them. If and when cancer is conquered, Raza would have played a major role in the battle.

I got this book by chance. It was a random choice from amazon suggestions.

And I could t be more positively surprised. The author writes with her heart. Her words resonate long after you finished a paragraph or a chapter. Feels like she is talking to you personally with the kindness of a mother explaining things to a child.

715L+wF+jZL.jpg

No, her style is not saccharin on a page. She talks from a position of a professional and researcher in the field, someone who witness suffering and joy. Someone who has been beaten but refuses to give up the fight.

Saying too much will spoil the joy of reading the book. I can only say that I received the book today and I finished within hours. Her messages is powerful!

This excellent book by a leading oncology researcher and physician makes the argument that the strategy of searching for the last cancer cell in the body and eliminating it has not resulted in much progress since the "war on cancer" was declared in the early 1970s under the Nixon administration in America. Instead, with all the new tools at our disposal, perhaps we should be focusing more on early detection and looking for the first cancer cells in the body. It is a scientific argument persuasively and eloquently made through detailed explanations of the relevant science accompanied by the poignant stories of a number of patients under the author's care, including her own husband who eventually died of the disease. If you have an interest (and who doesn't?) in how cancer is treated, you must read this book. You will learn a great deal from it, and not just about cancer.