The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last

by Azra Raza

In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.

• ISBN10: 1541699513
• ISBN13: 9781541699519
• Publish Date: 10 December 2020 (first published 4 June 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Basic Books
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

The Myth Of (Cancer) Experience. This book actually does a phenomenal job of using both hard data and anecdotal case studies to show what the current state of cancer research and treatment is - and why it is costing us far too much in both lives and dollars. This is a cancer doc/ researcher who has been in the field longer than this reader has been alive, and yet she attacks the problem in a way that genuinely makes sense: if cancer is effectively a group of cells that begin replicating uncontrollably, the best way to eliminate this phenomenon is to detect these cells as early as possible and eliminate them before they become problematic. Using several patient case studies - including her husband, who apparently started out as her boss, and her daughter's best friend among them - Raza does an excellent job of providing names and faces (yes, the book has pictures of the patients as well) to go along with the alarming yet decently documented data. (Roughly 18% of the book is bibliography, which is perhaps a touch low - 25-30% is more typical - but is better than one might expect from such a case study driven narrative.) Ultimately this book actually makes the case for The Myth of Experience better than the authors of the book by that title did, which is actually fairly interesting to this reader. :) And the Urdu poetry (with English translations as well) was a nice touch to lighten a text that could otherwise be a bit dreary. Very much recommended.