Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

  175 the cancer virus program siphoned away more than 10 percent: Ibid.

  176 "Relatively few viruses": Peyton Rous, "The Challenge to Man of the Neoplastic Cell," Nobel lecture, December 13, 1966, Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine, 1963-1970 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1972).

  176 "Relatively few viruses": Peyton Rous, "Surmise and Fact on the Nature of Cancer," Nature 183, no. 4672 (1959): 1357-61.

  177 "The program directed by the National Cancer Institute": "Hunt Continues for Cancer Drug," New York Times, October 13, 1963.

  177 "The iron is hot and this is the time": Letter from Sidney Farber to Mary Lasker, September 4, 1965, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 171.

  177 "No large mission or goal-directed effort": Mary Lasker, "Need for a Commission on the Conquest of Cancer as a National Goal by 1976," Mary Lasker Papers, Box 111.

  177 Solomon Garb, a little-known professor of pharmacology: Solomon Garb, Cure for Cancer: A National Goal (New York: Springer, 1968).

  177 "A major hindrance to the cancer effort": Ibid.

  178 At 4:17 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969: "The Moon: A Giant Leap for Mankind," Time, July 25, 1969.

  178 "magnificent desolation": Buzz Aldrin, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (New York: Harmony Books, 2009).

  178 "It suddenly struck me": "Space: The Greening of the Astronauts," Time, December 11, 1972.

  178 "It was a stunning scientific and intellectual accomplishment": "The Moon," Time.

  178 When Max Faget, the famously taciturn engineer: Glen E. Swanson, Before This Decade Is Out: Personal Reflections on the Apollo Program (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 1999), 374.

  179 In her letters, Mary Lasker began: Lasker, "Need for a Commission."

  179 Lister Hill, the Alabama senator: "Two Candidates in Primary in Alabama Count Ways They Love Wallace," New York Times, May 27, 1968.

  179 Edward Kennedy, Farber's ally from Boston: "Conflicted Ambitions, Then, Chappaquiddick," Boston Globe, February 17, 2009.

  179 "We're in the worst," Lasker recalled: Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part II, Session 5, p. 125.

  "A moon shot for cancer"

  180 The relationship of government: William Carey, "Research Development and the Federal Budget," Seventeenth National Conference on the Administration of Research, September 11, 1963.

  180 What has Santa Nixon: Robert Semple, New York Times, December 26, 1971.

  180 On December 9, 1969, on a chilly Sunday: Advertisement from the American Cancer Society, New York Times, December 17, 1971.

  181 in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968).

  181 in Love Story: Erich Segal, Love Story, DVD, directed by Arthur Hiller, 2001.

  181 Bang the Drum Slowly, a 1973 release: Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly, DVD, directed by John D. Hancock, 2003.

  181 Brian's Song, the story of the Chicago Bears star: Al Silverman, Gale Sayers, and William Blinn, Brian's Song, DVD, directed by Buzz Kulik, 2000.

  181 "plunged into numb agony": Richard A. Rettig, Cancer Crusade: The Story of the National Cancer Act of 1971 (Lincoln, NE: Author's Choice Press, 1977), 175.

  181 "Cancer changes your life," a patient wrote: "My Fight against Cancer," Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1973.

  182 "A radical change happened to the perception": Renata Salecl, On Anxiety (London: Routledge, 2004), 4. Also Renata Salecl, interview with author, April 2006.

  182 The "Big Bomb," a columnist wrote: Ellen Goodman, "A Fear That Fits the Times," September 14, 1978.

  183 "To oppose big spending against cancer": James T. Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 149.

  183 Nixon often groused: For Nixon's comments, see National Archives and Records Administration, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, 513-14, June 7, 1971, transcribed by Daniel Greenberg. See I. I. Rabi, quoted in Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 3.

  184 Mary Lasker proposed that a "neutral" committee: Rettig, Cancer Crusade, 82.

  184 The commission, she wrote, should "include space scientists": Mary Lasker, "Need for a Commission on the Conquest of Cancer as a National Goal by 1976," Mary Lasker Papers, Box 111.

  184 Sidney Farber was selected as the cochairman: Rettig, Cancer Crusade, 74-89.

  184 Yarborough wrote to Mary Lasker in the summer of 1970: Letter from Ralph W. Yarborough to Mary Lasker, June 2, 1970, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 112.

  184 The panel's final report: The report was published in two documents in November 1970 and reprinted in December 1970 and April 1971. See Senate Document 92-99, 1st sess., April 14, 1971. Also see Rettig, Cancer Crusade, 105.

  185 "Not only can we afford the effort": Benno Schmidt, quoted by Alan C. Davis (interview with Richard Rettig) in Rettig, Cancer Crusade, 109.

  185 On March 9, 1971, acting on the panel's recommendations: Ibid.

  185 she persuaded her close friend Ann Landers: "Mary Woodard Lasker: First Lady of Medical Research," presentation by Neen Hunt at the National Library of Medicine, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/TL/B/B/M/P/ (accessed January 6, 2010).

  185 Landers's column appeared on April 20, 1971: Ask Ann Landers, Chicago Sun-Times, April 20, 1971.

  186 "I saw trucks arriving at the Senate": Rick Kogan, America's Mom: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Ann Landers (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 104.

  186 An exasperated secretary charged with sorting: "Ann Landers," Washington Post, May 18, 1971.

  186 Stuart Symington, the senator from Missouri: Ann Landers and Margo Howard, A Life in Letters (New York: Warner Books, 2003), 255.

  186 "Cancer is not simply an island": Philip Lee. Also see Committee on Labor and Public Welfare Report No. 92-247, June 28, 1971, p. 43. S. 1828, 92nd Cong., 1st sess.

  186 "An all-out effort at this time": Patterson, Dread Disease, 152.

  186 James Watson, who had discovered the structure of DNA: See James Watson, "To Fight Cancer, Know the Enemy," New York Times, August 5, 2009.

  186 "Doing 'relevant' research": James Watson, "The Growing Up of Cancer Research," Science Year: The Book World Science Annual, 1973; Mary Lasker Papers.

  187 "In a nutshell": "Washington Rounds," Medical World News, March 31, 1972.

  187 "I suspect there is trouble ahead": Irvine H. Page, "The Cure of Cancer 1976," Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine 77, no. 3 (1971): 357-60.

  187 "If Richard Milhous Nixon": "Tower Ticker," Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1971.

  187 "Don't worry about it": Benno Schmidt, oral history and memoir (gift and property of Elizabeth Smith, New York).

  187 In November 1971, Paul Rogers: For details of Representative Rogers's bill, see Rettig, Cancer Crusade, 250-75.

  188 In December 1971, the House finally: Iwan W. Morgan, Nixon (London: Arnold, 2002), 72.

  188 On December 23, 1971, on a cold, windswept afternoon: "Nixon Signs Cancer Bill; Cites Commitment to Cure," New York Times, December 24, 1971.

  188 $400 million for 1972: "The National Cancer Act of 1971," Senate Bill 1828, enacted December 23, 1871 (P.L. 92-218), National Cancer Institute, http://legislative.cancer.gov/history/phsa/1971 (accessed December 2, 2009). Frank Rauscher, the director of the National Cancer Program, estimated the real numbers to have been $233 million in 1971, $378 million in 1972, $432 million in 1973, and $500 million in 1974. Frank Rauscher, "Budget and the National Cancer Program (NCP)," Cancer Research 34, no. 7 (1974): 1743-48.

  188 If money was "frozen energy": Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 7, p. 185.

  188 The new bill, she told a reporter, "contained nothing": Ibid., Part 2, Session 10, p. 334.

  188 Lasker and Sidney Farber withdrew: Ibid., Part 1, Session 7, p. 185; and Thomas Farber, interview with author, December 2007.

  189 "Powerful? I don't know": "Mary Lasker: Still Determined to Beautify the City and
Nation," New York Times, April 28, 1974.

  189 "A crash program can produce only one result": Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1971, p. 16.

  189 On March 30, 1973, in the late afternoon: Denis R. Miller, "A Tribute to Sidney Farber--the Father of Modern Chemotherapy," British Journal of Haematology 134 (2006): 20-26; "Dr. Sidney Farber, a Pioneer in Children's Cancer Research; Won Lasker Award," New York Times, March 31, 1973. Also see Mary Lasker, "A Personal Tribute to Sidney Farber, M.D. (1903-1973)," CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 23, no. 4 (1973): 256-57.

  190 "Surely," she wrote, "the world will never be the same": Lasker, "A Personal Tribute."

  PART THREE:

  "WILL YOU TURN ME OUT IF I CAN'T GET BETTER?"

  191 Oft expectation fails: William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (New York: Macmillan, 1912), act 2, scene 1, lines 145-47, p. 34.

  191 I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker: T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," lines 84-86, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), 1232.

  191 You are absolutely correct: Frank Rauscher, letter to Mary Lasker, March 18, 1974, Mary Lasker Papers, Box 118.

  "In God we trust. All others [must] have data"

  193 In science, ideology tends to corrupt: "Knowledge Dethroned," New York Times, September 28, 1975.

  193 Orthodoxy in surgery is like orthodoxy in other departments: G. Keynes, "Carcinoma of the Breast, the Unorthodox View," Proceedings of the Cardiff Medical Society, April 1954, 40-49.

  193 You mean I had a mastectomy for nothing?: Untitled document, 1981, Rose Kushner Papers, 1953-90, Box 43, Harvard University.

  194 "In my own surgical attack on carcinoma": Cushman Davis Haagensen, Diseases of the Breast (New York: Saunders, 1971), 674.

  194 Halsted's "centrifugal theory": W. S. Halsted, "The Results of Operations for the Cure of the Cancer of Breast Performed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital from June 1889 to January 1894," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin 4 (1894): 497-555.

  194 "To some extent," he wrote: Haagensen, Diseases of the Breast, 674.

  194 "operated on cancer of the breast solely": D. Hayes Agnew, The Principles and Practice of Surgery, Being a Treatise on Surgical Diseases and Injuries, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1889), 3: 711.

  194 "I do not despair of carcinoma being cured": Ibid.

  195 at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London: G. Keynes, "The Treatment of Primary Carcinoma of the Breast with Radium," Acta Radiologica 10 (1929): 393-401; G. Keynes, "The Place of Radium in the Treatment of Cancer of the Breast," Annals of Surgery 106 (1937): 619-30. For biographical details, see W. LeFanu, "Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982)," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 56, no. 4 (1982): 571-73.

  195 In August 1924, Keynes examined a patient: "The Radiation Treatment of Carcinoma of the Breast," St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, vol. 60, ed. W. McAdam Eccles et al. (London: John Murray, 1927), 91-93.

  195 "The ulcer rapidly heal[ed]": Ibid.

  195 "extension of [the] operation beyond a local removal": Ibid., 94.

  196 the lumpectomy: Roger S. Foster Jr., "Breast Cancer Detection and Treatment: A Personal and Historical Perspective," Archives of Surgery 138, no. 4 (2003): 397-408.

  196 George Barney Crile: Ibid.; G. Crile Jr., "The Evolution of the Treatment of Breast Cancer," Breast Cancer: Controversies in Management, ed. L. Wise and H. Johnson Jr. (Armonk, NY: Futura Publishing Co., 1994).

  196 Crile's father. George Crile Sr.: Narendra Nathoo, Frederick K. Lautzenheiser, and Gene H. Barnett, "The First Direct Human Blood Transfusion: the Forgotten Legacy of George W. Crile," Neurosurgery 64 (2009): 20-26; G. W. Crile, Hemorrhage and Transfusion: An Experimental and Clinical Research (New York: D. Appleton, 1909).

  196 Political revolutions, the writer Amitav Ghosh writes: Amitav Ghosh, Dancing in Cambodia, at Large in Burma (New Delhi: Ravi Dayal, 1998), 25.

  196 Crile Jr. was beginning to have his own doubts: Foster, "Breast Cancer Detection and Treatment"; George Crile, The Way It Was: Sex, Surgery, Treasure and Travel (Kent, OH: Kent University Press, 1992), 391-400.

  197 Crile soon gave up on the radical mastectomy: George Crile Jr., "Treatment of Breast Cancer by Local Excision," American Journal of Surgery 109 (1965): 400-403; George Crile Jr., "The Smaller the Cancer the Bigger the Operation? Rational of Small Operations for Small Tumors and Large Operations for Large Tumors," Journal of the American Medical Association 199 (1967): 736-38; George Crile Jr., A Biologic Consideration of Treatment of Breast Cancer (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1967); G. Crile Jr. and S. O. Hoerr, "Results of Treatment of Carcinoma of the Breast by Local Excision," Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics 132 (1971): 780-82.

  197 two statisticians, Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson: J. Neyman and E. S. Pearson, "On the Use and Interpretation of Certain Test Criteria for Purposes of Statistical Inference. Part I," Biometrika 20A, nos. 1-2 (1928): 175-240; J. Neyman and E. S. Pearson, "On the Use and Interpretation of Certain Test Criteria for Purposes of Statistical Inference. Part II," Biometrika 20A, nos. 3-4 (1928): 263-94.

  198 "Go thou and do likewise": Haagensen, Diseases of the Breast, 674.

  198 It took a Philadelphia surgeon: Kate Travis, "Bernard Fisher Reflects on a Half-Century's Worth of Breast Cancer Research," Journal of the National Cancer Institute 97, no. 22 (2005): 1636-37.

  199 "It has become apparent": Bernard Fisher, Karnosfky Memorial Lecture transcript, Rose Kushner papers, Box 4, File 62, Harvard University.

  199 Thalidomide, prescribed widely to control: Phillip Knightley, Suffer the Children: The Story of Thalidomide (New York: Viking Press, 1979).

  199 In Texas, Jane Roe: Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

  199 "Refuse to submit to a radical mastectomy": "Breast Cancer: Beware of These Danger Signals," Chicago Tribune, October 3, 1973.

  199 Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring: Ellen Leopold, A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 199.

  200 Betty Rollin and Rose Kushner: Betty Rollin, First, You Cry (New York: Harper, 2000); Rose Kushner, Why Me? (Philadelphia: Saunders Press, 1982).

  200 "Happily for women," Kushner wrote: Rose Kushner papers, Box 2, File 22; Kushner, Why Me?

  200 In 1967, bolstered by the activism: See Fisher's NSABP biography at http://www .nsabp.pitt.edu/BCPT_Speakers_Biographies.asp (accessed January 11, 2010).

  200 "The clinician, no matter how venerable": Bernard Fisher, "A Commentary on the Role of the Surgeon in Primary Breast Cancer," Breast Cancer Research and Treatment 1 (1981): 17-26.

  200 "In God we trust": "Treating Breast Cancer: Findings Question Need for Removal," Washington Post, October 29, 1979.

  200 "To get a woman to participate in a clinical trial": "Bernard Fisher in Conversation," Pitt Med Magazine (University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine magazine), July 2002.

  200 Fisher's NSABP mastectomy trial: Bernard Fisher et al., "Findings from NSABP Protocol No. B-04: Comparison of Radical Mastectomy with Alternative Treatments. II. The Clinical and Biological Significance of Medial-Central Breast Cancers," Cancer 48, no. 8 (1981): 1863-72.

  "The smiling oncologist"

  202 Few doctors in this country: Rose Kushner, "Is Aggressive Adjuvant Chemotherapy the Halsted Radical of the '80s?" CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 34, no. 6 (1984): 345-51.

  202 And it is solely by risking life: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), 232.

  202 "large-scale chemotherapeutic attack": James D. Hardy, The World of Surgery, 1945-1985: Memoirs of One Participant (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 216.

  202 "our trench and our bunker": Mickey Goulian, interview with author, December 2005.

  202 "Wandering about the NIH clinical center": Stewart Alsop, Stay of Execution: A Sort of Memoir (New York: Lippincott, 1973), 218.

  203 "Although this was a cancer ward": Kathleen R.
Gilbert, ed. The Emotional Nature of Qualitative Research (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2001).

  203 "accepted roles, a predetermined outcome, constant stimuli": Gerda Lerner, A Death of One's Own (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 71.

  203 "yellow and orange walls in the corridors": "Cancer Ward Nurses: Where 'C' Means Cheerful," Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1975.

  203 the nurses wore uniforms with plastic yellow buttons: Alsop, Stay of Execution, 52.

  203 "Saving the individual patient": Ibid., 84.

  204 In 1965, at Michigan State University: Barnett Rosenberg, Loretta Van Camp, and Thomas Krigas, "Inhibition of Cell Division in Escherichia coli by Electrolysis Products from a Platinum Electrode," Nature 205, no. 4972 (1965): 698-99.

  205 John Cleland: Larry Einhorn, interview with author, November 2009; also see Cure, Winter 2004; Craig A. Almeida and Sheila A. Barry, Cancer: Basic Science and Clinical Aspects (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 259; "Survivor Milks Life for All It's Worth," Purdue Agriculture Connections, Spring 2006; "John Cleland Carried the Olympic Torch in 2000 When the Relay Came through Indiana," Friends 4 Cures, http://www.friends4cures.org/cure_mag_article.shtml (accessed January 9, 2010).

  205 "I cannot remember what I said": John Cleland, Cure, Winter 2004.

  205 By 1975, Einhorn had treated: Einhorn, interview with author, December 2009.

  205 "Walking up to that podium": Ibid.

  205 "It was unforgettable": Ibid. Also see "Triumph of the Cure," Salon, July 29, 1999, http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/07/29/lance/index.html (accessed November 30, 2009).

  205 Margaret Edson's play Wit: Margaret Edson, Wit (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1999).

  205 "You may think my vocabulary": Ibid., 28.

  206 "We want and need and seek better guidance": Howard E. Skipper, "Cancer Chemotherapy Is Many Things: G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Lecture," Cancer Research 31, no. 9 (1971): 1173-80.

  206 There was Taxol: Monroe E. Wall and Mansukh C. Wani, "Camptothecin and Taxol: Discovery to Clinic--Thirteenth Bruce F. Cain Memorial Award Lecture," Cancer Research 55 (1995): 753-60; Jordan Goodman and Vivien Walsh, The Story of Taxol: Nature and Politics in the Pursuit of an Anti-Cancer Drug (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001).