The Emperor Of All Maladies, By Siddhartha Muukhererjee

The Emperor of All Maladies published in 2010, by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a biography of cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee is an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer institute. Mukherjee has become a storyteller of one of the most phenomenal stories in science that has ever been told, the history of cancer. The author talks about the setbacks and victories of cancer treatment. Dating from the Persian Queen Atossa’s breast cancer which was excised by her greek slave, to the 20th century’s battles with chemotherapy. Siddhartha Mukherjee gives detailed accounts of patients’ treatments through cancer. He shapes the book as a biography, “an attempt to enter the mind of this immortal illness”. It is a story Siddhartha Mukherjee seems to have an urge to tell
In 1947 Farber worked in a small, damp laboratory in Boston performing autopsies on specimens of cancers. Farber was particularly interested in an aggressive type of cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It was deemed aggressive since it could kill a child in a matter of days. A normal work day for Farber changed into a very unusual day when a two year old child came to the hospital feeling terribly ill. Analyzing the little boy’s blood through a tube, Farber could see the obvious signs of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Millions of dangerous white cells “dividing in frenzy” according to Mukherjee. In two months the boy was in a fatal state. Farber injected an experimental drug into the boy and in two weeks he was acting like any normal two year old. Farber had begun to dream of cures for cancer from that point on. A year later, Farber was treating an angelic looking boy named Einar Gustafson for a lymphoma, a disease that killed 90% of the people who have it. Farber rechristened Einar as Jimmy and made him the cherubic face of childhood cancer. In the coming years Farber made a children’s hospital named the Jimmy Clinic and started the Jimmy Fund the raise money for cancer research. Just like that the political side of cancer had come
Mukherjee explains it as “the two conversations seemed to be occuring in sealed and separate universes”. Cancer was hard to understand, whether logically in the lab or emotionally in the hospital. In the lab cancer is confusing in its own genetics. In the hospital, is where cancer’s inmates are, suffering from the strange mutation that migrated to their body. There are many heroic scientists, researchers, and patients mentioned in The Emperor of All Maladies. Such as Robert Weinberg, Harold Varmus, Bert Vogelstein, and many other researchers who worked out the mysterious genetics of cancer and drew out the sequences of the missing breaks that releases the insurgent cells. The words of James Watson were “beating cancer is now a realistic goal because at long last we largely know it’s true genetic and chemical sequences”. Perhaps we may be ready for the