An Oncologist Writes 'A Biography Of Cancer' from NPR Podcast Fresh Air

Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee was treating one of his patients, a woman with advanced abdominal cancer who had relapsed multiple times, when she asked him what seemed like a simple question. "She said, 'I'm willing to go on, but before I go on, I need to know what it is I'm battling,' " Mukherjee tells NPR's Terry Gross. But, as Mukherjee explains, describing his patient's illness wasn't so simple. Defining cancer, he says, is something doctors and scientists have been struggling to do since the disease's first documented appearance thousands of years ago

Download the podcast here. As usual, the NPR Fresh Air website and webpage for this story, is full featured, and definitely worth the thorough read-through. See also: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition, Cancer: 50 Essential Things to Do: Third Edition, Beating Cancer with Nutrition, book with CD