Cancer Quotes by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer was not disorganized chromosomal chaos. It was organized chromosomal chaos

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“In God we trust. All others [must] have data. - Bernard Fisher”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

It was Disney World fused with Cancerland.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

All cancers are alike but they are alike in a unique way.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

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

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

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

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Normal cells are identically normal; malignant cells become unhappily malignant in unique ways.”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

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

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

We don't know why, but pancreatic cancer has a very interesting physiological link to depression. There seems to be a deep link,…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population is ageing overall. And cancer is…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

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

“Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own.”

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character…

— 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

“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

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

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last century. There is…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out…

— 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

“Our knowledge of… molecular defects in cancer has come from a dedicated twenty years of the best molecular biology research. Yet this…

— 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

“But in 1960, oncology was not yet ready for this proposal. Not until several years later did it strike the board that…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer. In the…

— 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

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

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“That this seemingly simple mechanism—cell growth without barriers—can lie at the heart of this grotesque and multifaceted illness is a testament to…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressors are the molecular pivots of the cell. They are the gatekeepers of cell division, and the division of…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“This was the tenth month of my "fellowship" in oncology - a two-year immersive medical program to train cancer specialists - and…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Yet the hunger to treat patients still drove Farber. And sitting in his basement laboratory in the summer of 1947, Farber had…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Specificity refers to the ability of any medicine to discriminate between its intended target and its host. Killing a cancer cell in…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

What we do in the laboratory is we try to design drugs that will not just eradicate cancer cells but will eradicate…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population -…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

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

“Only one person was conspicuously missing from the (American Society of Clinical Oncology, ASCO) party - Dennis Slamon. Having spent the afternoon…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“No single strategy for prevention or cure had been a runaway success. But undeniably this "half-full cup" was the product of an…

— Siddhartha Mukherjee

“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