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 Copy Share Image
If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“A furious researcher stumbled out of one of the lab buildings and shouted, 'I'm a scientist working on the AIDS cure. Why… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Nothing is invented; nothing is extraneous. Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Yet the hunger to treat patients still drove Farber. And sitting in his basement laboratory in the summer of 1947, Farber had… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“A note of caution: epigenetics is also on the verge of transforming into a dangerous idea. Epigenetic modifications of genes can potentially superpose historical… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“I had a novice's hunger for history, but also a novice's inability to envision it.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Any extrapolation of history into the future presupposes an environment of static discovery—an oxymoron.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Six decades and two years, no more than a passing glance of time, separate Mendel's initial experiments on peas and the court-mandated sterilization of… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“We now know that cells have ancient detectors that recognize viral genes and stamp them with chemical marks, like cancellation signs, to prevent their… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“Familial schizophrenia (like normal human features such as intelligence and temperament) is thus highly heritable but only moderately inheritable. In other words, genes-hereditary determinants-are… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“If you prefer an “academic life” as a retreat from reality, do not go into biology. This field is for a man or woman… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“But the pigs--seventy pounds of porcine weight that did not take kindly to weekly endoscopies--did not sprout any ulcers. And testing the theory on… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
“One of the four genes used by Yamanaka to reverse cellular fate is called c-myc. Myc, the rejuvenating factor, is no ordinary gene: it… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reorganization of cancer in terms… — Siddhartha Mukherjee Copy Share Image
