Book Review: The emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer

New York: Scribner; 2010 ISBN: 978-1-4391-0795-9 Hardcover, 571 pages I found this book quite unique in that a history of cancer was covered along with a detailed description of personal experience during the author’s early days as an oncology fellow. As the same position of an oncology fellow and researcher, I read the book in one sitting because I could empathize with the author all the way through reading the book. The ultimate purpose of this book is not just to understand the past of cancer but to raise a question: is it possible to eradicate this disease from our bodies and societies forever? To try to help the readers come up with the answer, this 571page book covers the whole story of fighting against cancer from its first documented appearances to the recent remarkable triumphs including Trastuzumab for Her-2 expressing breast cancer and Imatinib for Bcr-abl positive chronic myelogenous leukemia. Notably, historical photos were illustrated so that the readers can see at a glance the story of this book. This book is composed of six parts that deal with the cenotaphic events according to the historical progress in the screening, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer. In the first part, the author mentioned the first description of leukemia as “a suppuration of blood” by Dr. John Bennett and subsequent renaming to “leukemia” by Dr. Rudolf Virchow in 1847. The author introduces Dr. Sidney Farber as the father of modern chemotherapy, who accidentally discovered aminopterin as a powerful anti-cancer chemical leading to the dramatic remission of leukemia. In addition, he describes the development of surgery and anesthesia as well as the concept of radicality in the removal of the tumor. In the following parts, this book covers several landmarks in the development of the treatment of cancer including combination chemotherapy and molecular targeted agents. Another part depicts the exploration history of cancer causes which includes the discovery of cancer-causing viruses such as Rous sarcoma virus and two-hit hypothesis, that is, activated proto-oncogenes Book Review