Siddhartha Mukherjee

“There is no history; there is only biography,” Emerson once wrote.”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“gene (information -> encodes protein (form) -> enables function”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“A chicken, de Vries realized, was merely an egg's way of making a better egg.”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

One swallow is a coincidence, but two swallows make summer.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“A model is a lie that helps you see the truth”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“There is no such thing as perfection, only the relentless, thirsty matching of an organism to its environment.”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

This was yet another colonial fascination: to create the conditions of misery in a population, then subject it to social or medical…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Without equality, he argued, eugenics would degenerate into yet another mechanism by which the powerful could control the weak.”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The (cancer) cells, technically speaking, are immortals. The woman from whose body they were once taken has been dead for thirty years”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many different things…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this idea of a hidden swelling is seminal…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Show me that you can divide the notes of a song; But first, show me that you can discern Between what can…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“But while Darwin's encounters with the "natives" of South America in the 1830s had strengthened his belief in the common ancestry of…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, it is because their contributions stand in place of the…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“It lives desperately, inventively, fiercely, territorially, cannily, and defensively--at times, as if teaching us how to survive. To confront cancer is to…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“We now know that cells have ancient detectors that recognize viral genes and stamp them with chemical marks, like cancellation signs, to…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“One researcher estimates that the effect of the D4DR explains only about 5 percent of the variance in novelty-seeking behavior among individuals.…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Ehrlich hedged. The cancer cell, he explained, was a fundamentally different target from a bacterial cell. Specific affinity relied, paradoxically, not on…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“An analogy to natural language illustrates the point. The letters A,C, and T convey very little meaning by themselves, but can be…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The most intriguing correlations obtained by the Minnesota study were also among the most unexpected. Social and political attitudes between twins reared…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The experiments progress slowly," Mendel wrote. "At first a certain amount of patience was needed, but I soon found that matters went…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The parents of a child provided, on average, half the content of that feature; the grandparents, a quarter; the great-grandparents, an eighth-and…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

In the laboratory, we call this the six-degrees-of-separation-from-cancer rule: you can ask any biological question, no matter how seemingly distant-what makes the…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The secret to battling cancer, then, is to find means to prevent these mutations from occurring in susceptible cells, or to find…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The landscape of carcinogens is not static either. We are chemical apes: having discovered the capacity to extract, purify, and react molecules…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“But the pigs--seventy pounds of porcine weight that did not take kindly to weekly endoscopies--did not sprout any ulcers. And testing the…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“...turned into a horrific mistake. Lucy Willis had observed that folic acid, if administered to nutrient-deprived patients, could restore the normal genesis…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“It is a testament to the unsettling beauty of the genome that it can make the real world “stick.” Our genes do…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“The question is not, can you, given an individual’s skin color, hair texture, or language, infer something about their ancestry or origin.…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“It is the form of hemoglobin, then, that permits its function. The physical structure of the molecule enables its chemical nature, the…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“It is fiercely inventive. It squeezes complexity out of simplicity. It orchestrates the activation or repression of certain genes in only certain…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“It is the impulse of science to understand nature, and the impulse of technology to try to manipulate it. Recombinant DNA had…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee