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groundgreads 's review for:
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
As a disclaimer, it took me around a year to finish this book. Since I dropped this book around the 20% mark and then picked it back up months later.
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As someone who frequents the interwebs for too long, the term "the indomitable human spirit" has lingered in my mind as I came to the end of this book.
The book, essentially, covers humanity's unrelentless struggle against - you guessed it - the emperor of all maladies. It covered from the earliest record known of the disease, notes from the ancient egyptian physician (later deified) Imhotep, stating: "For [cancer], there is no cure," to our most modern approach of treating cancer.
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In my experience, science has gotten to the point where the average person would struggle to comprehend it fully. To a certain degree, there is an element of "believing."
In light of (not-so) recent events, questioning treatments against a disease, in my humble opinion, is fair. Skepticism is an essential element in science. What matters is how one approaches that skepticism; does one go on to read medical journals or posts on social media of questionable credibilty?
This book broadly covered the evolution of treatment of cancer. One may experience how a treatment was developed (or even "discovered"), tested, and brought to the market; and even if it the initial results were positive, was there an underlying bias that led us to drawing an innacurate conclusion?
It brought to the table, how careful and methodical the whole system is, that science is not a monolith. Disagreement and skepticism are ordinary (and even encouraged.)
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I neither study medicine nor work in the area, my knowledge of the subject is as much as the next person. The book did a great job of keeping down the medical/biology jargon, without dumbing everything down.
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As someone who frequents the interwebs for too long, the term "the indomitable human spirit" has lingered in my mind as I came to the end of this book.
The book, essentially, covers humanity's unrelentless struggle against - you guessed it - the emperor of all maladies. It covered from the earliest record known of the disease, notes from the ancient egyptian physician (later deified) Imhotep, stating: "For [cancer], there is no cure," to our most modern approach of treating cancer.
---
In my experience, science has gotten to the point where the average person would struggle to comprehend it fully. To a certain degree, there is an element of "believing."
In light of (not-so) recent events, questioning treatments against a disease, in my humble opinion, is fair. Skepticism is an essential element in science. What matters is how one approaches that skepticism; does one go on to read medical journals or posts on social media of questionable credibilty?
This book broadly covered the evolution of treatment of cancer. One may experience how a treatment was developed (or even "discovered"), tested, and brought to the market; and even if it the initial results were positive, was there an underlying bias that led us to drawing an innacurate conclusion?
It brought to the table, how careful and methodical the whole system is, that science is not a monolith. Disagreement and skepticism are ordinary (and even encouraged.)
---
I neither study medicine nor work in the area, my knowledge of the subject is as much as the next person. The book did a great job of keeping down the medical/biology jargon, without dumbing everything down.