The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful book about the killer disease cancer. The author traces its origin from the earliest days in the form of cancer of bone found in the bodies discovered in the Andean ranges of Peru to the modern day where fighting it has become a daily routing for the doctors all around the world.

The popular belief is that Cancer is a modern disease and statistics may show that it has become widespread in the recent past. Statistically there may be a truth to this, but as the author points out it is also true that many of the other diseases (like small pox, pneumonia) and epidemics (cholera, plague) which are considered curable today were practically incurable the past and this lead to the death of many people before they could reach an age where parts of their body fall prey to the big C. Also people live longer in the modern times as compared to the earlier times. All this leads to people to think that this is a modern disease.

The author traces the story of the fight of the medical fraternity against this disease. He says how fighting this is a very difficult as almost each person's cancer is different from most others have the cancer of the same organ. This makes it difficult to come up with a cure all cancer treatment. Despite this challenge a lot of progress has been made in this field and the cancers that had to be given up as untreatable have some treatment with a moderate success rate. At the same time there has been no progress in figuring out the root cause for the occurrence of this disease in people who have no habits that could lead to cancer and have no history of ancestral occurrence of the disease. Barring a few theories, it is a still a big mystery as to what triggers the onset of this disease in a seemingly healthy living being.

The author also highlights the dilemma of the medical fraternity in trying out drugs without much testing on humans in early stages of the cure. While on one hand there are people desperate enough to try any cure for a seemingly uncurable disease, on the other hand one has the moral responsibility of not trying out something that could jeopardise the life of a human being. The author discusses how while there was a clamour for the cure for AIDs using experimental medicine the legal and ethical fraternity was against it.

A very fine book to read to understand the horror of this disease and the challenges that are faced by those trying to find a reliable treatment for it.

A must read.

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