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THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER

Name: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER
Author: Devra Davis
ISBN: 978-0-465-01566-5

by Devra Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2007

One can hope, however, that Davis’s book will assure that proper attention is paid.

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Cancer remains such a prolific killer, says the author, because the medical community focuses on treatment rather than prevention of the root causes.

Davis (When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, 2002, etc.), an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at University of Pittsburgh’s Cancer Institute, offers a detailed history of workplace and environmental carcinogens that predates Nixon’s “war” on cancer in the ’70s. She reminds us of Sir Percival Pott’s observations of scrotal cancers in English chimney sweeps, the radiation-induced cancers that followed the discovery of X-rays, the Curies’ work with radium and, less well-known, the research of Nazi scientists who linked tobacco to cancer and led officials to discourage Germans from smoking during World War II. The German scientists were pioneers in the new field of epidemiology, which even today is denigrated by some since it involves methods like surveys (unreliable) and statistics (suspect). Much of the text makes for grim but fascinating reading as Davis reviews the tobacco story and describes conditions in steel mills, copper smelters, chemical factories and plastics plants, where workers are exposed to insidious and lethal solvents and agents such as asbestos, benzene, formaldehyde and dioxin. She also immortalizes the many poor people in small towns next to waste dumps or downstream from hugely polluted rivers who died from cancer or whose children suffered birth defects. In almost every case, the offending corporation lied, denied, delayed or bought-off complaints, recruiting the best legal talent and, sad to say, even highly respected scientists. Rather than engage in what has been a fruitless battle of litigation, vengeance and counterproductive legislation, Davis proposes a kind of truth-and-reconciliation approach to get industry and public-health experts mutually involved. But she notes that, unfortunately, it’s simply not happening fast enough, and she goes on to raise her own concerns about cell phones, Ritalin and aspartame.

One can hope, however, that Davis’s book will assure that proper attention is paid.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-465-01566-5

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS

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ALTERED FATES

THE GENETIC RE-ENGINEERING OF HUMAN LIFE

by Jeff Lyon & Peter Gorner ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1995

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Adapted from the authors' Pulitzer Prizewinning series for the Chicago Tribune, a detailed look at the cutting edge of medical research: attacking disease by repairing inherited flaws in the cells of the human body. Gene therapy is potentially as revolutionary as Pasteur's germ theory of disease, especially as science uncovers more and more diseases that can be traced to genetic defects. It is also fraught with controversy, as many researchers urge extreme caution in the introduction of foreign genetic material (often derived from viruses) into the human body. Others (notably William French Anderson, formerly director of the molecular hematology department of the National Institutes of Health) want to push forward with therapies that promise to eradicate genetically based diseases. It is easy to understand this attitude when reading about Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, in which patients have to be restrained to prevent them from attacking their own bodies (as well as those tending them) with their teeth, or adenosine deaminase deficiency, in which the body has no defenses against infection. The authors put often epic political battles in the context of the personal quests of the scientists (who foresee Nobel prizes for the successful pioneers) and of the poignant case histories of the first patients to come forward as guinea pigs for the new therapies (some of whom are now living comparatively normal lives). The second half of the book looks at prospects for future developments in gene therapy, from the prevention of heart disease to the tailoring of drugs to attack tumors in specific locations. Lyon and Gorner also glance at the disturbing potential of genetically enhanced intelligence, and other ``cures'' suggestive of a revived science of eugenics, with all its ethical complexities. Well written, exhaustively researched, and filled with the human stories of the scientists, the doctors, and the patients whose only hope is this new field of medicine.

Pub Date: March 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-393-03596-4

Page Count: 592

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS

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KNOTTED TONGUES

STUTTERING IN HISTORY AND THE QUEST FOR A CURE

by Benson Bobrick ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1995

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A surprisingly entertaining essay on stuttering, chock full of hey-listen-to-this and did-you-ever-know-that anecdotes, plus, for sufferers, an account of a therapy that worked for the author. A stutterer from the age of seven, Bobrick (East of the Sun: The Epic Conquest and Tragic History of Siberia, 1992) uses his considerable research skills to shed light on this mysterious ailment, which afflicts 55 million people worldwide. The story of how Greek orator Demosthenes worked to overcome stuttering by shouting over the roar of the waves with a mouthful of pebbles is well-known, but Bobrick has dozens of others about notable stutterers—Moses, Claudius, Robert Boyle, Cotton Mather, Lewis Carroll, Somerset Maugham, English kings Charles I and George VI, and Winston Churchill, among others—and how they coped. He describes some of many psychoanalytic theories that attempted to explain stuttering and some of the astonishing therapies that sought to cure it (nosedrops, purgatives, gargling with breast milk, wrapping the tongue in little towels soaked in lettuce juice), and a host of surgeries (most frequently on the tongue, but also on the skull, the adenoids, and even the coccyx). Effective therapy, however, awaited a more complete understanding of neurophysiology, and in his final chapter, Bobrick concentrates on the work of Ronald Webster, an experimental psychologist who concluded that stuttering is a motor-control disorder based on a defect in the auditory feedback loop and developed an effective program to treat it. Eight years ago Bobrick enrolled in a program based on Webster's work, and has ``seldom stuttered since.'' No knots in this author's tongue. If the book has a weakness, it's the final chapter on current understanding and treatment of stuttering: a touch lackluster compared with the lively and amusing history that precedes it.