January 21, 2025 • 36 mins
No easy wins and only tough decisions.
'The Emperor Of All Maladies' by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a dense history of cancer throughout the centuries but particularly the 20th. Details breakthroughs in prevention, cure, chemotherapy, surgery, genetics and knowledge/understanding. Told from an American POV so largely uses stats from there whilst also showing how it is a global problem. Has a personal touch of his interactions with patients, scientists who discovered the next step forward and notable activists pushing for change (hence the 'biography').
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Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:52) Themes/Questions
(00:26:31) Author & Extras
(00:30:14) Summary
(00:33:25) Value 4 Value
(00:34:43) Join Live!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
No easy wins, only tough decisions.
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mere Mortals book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 22nd
January
2025.
(00:20):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast which reveals why Cancer is the greatest zodiac sign of all time.
No. It's actually Pisces, which is what I am. But no. Well, we're not gonna be talking about zodiac signs today, but we will be talking about Cancer. We have this book here, The Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer by Siddhartha
Mukherjee.
(00:40):
So this book was published in 2010.
It's 4 70 pages in length,
in terms of the actual writing. And then there's probably another 100 ish pages of index
and notes and
etcetera, things that you usually find in in medical books or things that reference a lot,
even history books. This probably took me 15 hours reading. And the reason for this is there's no charts in here. And it is a dense boy. It is just thick, thick, thick, thick,
(01:10):
in terms of the writing on the page and the size of the writing. Man, it took me a while to to really get through this book. So it's a a history of cancer throughout the centuries but particularly the 20th
century. So it really does focus the kind of periods from the 1900 to the 2000.
And it details breakthroughs in prevention, cure, chemotherapy,
(01:32):
surgery,
genetics, knowledge, understanding
of what cancer is.
And it's told from an American
POV, American point of view. So
we we do get a lot of,
I guess, statistics and stories from America, even though it is a worldwide
disease. And he does touch upon
(01:52):
researchers in other countries, for example, who made breakthroughs or people, you know, England in the earliest
earlier centuries in the 19th, where they were
first doing surgeries, and you know, the as it like the vaudeville type era where there was this
surgeries and like, it was almost in a stadium type thing. So students could be looking down upon it, things like that. So he has this personal touch,
(02:18):
that runs throughout the books of his interactions with himself, with students, with patients, with scientists,
who discovered, you know, the next step forward and notable activists,
pushing for change. Hence why this book is
a biography even though it's not a biography of a person. So it's a history, but he kinda treats cancer as if it has
(02:39):
some human like qualities. And you'll find the writing in this book is not only scientific.
It does have these,
relatable
touches to actual people and things like this. So let's jump into the themes and questions that come from this book. And
one of the things that came up was, you know, what's required to treat a patient well?
(03:01):
And for me, I would have said it was probably, you know, 95%
knowledge,
understanding
of
your craft. And in particular, we're talking about cancer here. So if you had gallbladder cancer,
95% of it would be how to treat gallbladder cancer, the knowledge of how that works,
(03:21):
drugs, surgery, all these sorts of things, risk profiles of people, and then maybe 5% of listening to the actual patient of
who it is.
Now, I think,
that has actually
that previous assumption I had is switched a lot. And
the the theme that I really got about this was the this medical knowledge part of that, the 95%.
(03:45):
And can you actually really know that much about cancer? How
how how much of a surety can you have that your doctors
is up to date with the knowledge? Is the knowledge even good? So let's jump into, I suppose, what we learned throughout this book. So
starting across, you know, from the very beginning across time,
the state of that of art evolves knowledge is built upon previous knowledge. So
(04:10):
the first knowledge of cancer was basically
acceptance of futility. And so we have a couple of references to
the hieroglyphics
and, and
the parchments that some Egyptians were riding on some of the earliest Greek people were talking about this hence,
kakonos,
which is cancer
(04:30):
in in,
in Greek, and hence the the little crab, which is on the front of this book here.
And so that was the the kind of originates. And it was very much just like
if you have this, these kind of symptoms, like a big lump in the side here, you're screwed. Like there's nothing that can be done for you.
(04:51):
When we
get into I suppose,
dare I say, more scientific age where people are coming up with more theories of this black bile and there's these 4 biles and the black one is what produces cancer.
So we're starting to see, okay, there's maybe some explanations for why these certain things are happening in people's bodies. In in particular, I haven't particularly defined cancer here. He goes into it into the book, but it's essentially
(05:18):
unlimited growth
of,
cells replicating.
And now several cells are meant to replicate, but it's when it hits this kind of unlimited exponential stage
without any of the tendency of of
of other genes to say, hey, you know, put the limit on here, anti tumor causing genes and things like this. And those are deactivated
(05:40):
or
things like this. So,
yeah, the cancer is complicated. There's very many different types when it comes to, you know, leukemia,
ones that affect the lungs, ones that are prostate, you know, there's basically you can get cancer in every type and situation in your body. So
he mostly focuses, I suppose, on leukemia
(06:04):
and
metastatic
cancer just as a general, which is where the cancer spreads throughout your body to other areas.
And and breast cancer, I'd say those were the the kind of main ones that were going over in this book. I don't even remember or recall a single instance of him talking about brain cancer, for example. So
it's,
(06:24):
he's talking about these sorts of things. Now we start to get into past those rude, rare, rudimentary treatments or
actually those were just rudimentary
ideas, knowledge, philosophies, theories of what cancer is. And we get to these rudimentary,
attempts at ailing these. And so this is where we're starting to see surgery, for example,
(06:47):
where people
are actually surgeons are cutting into the body and trying to remove these tumors and things like this.
And
that was probably, I would say, more in the kind of 17th,
18th century.
In the 19th century is where we start to see that, okay, maybe we can treat this chemically as well
and that there is perhaps some options of of treating these people.
(07:11):
And we're also getting to these
questions of like the efficacy of this. And of course, before this, there was also the the witch doctor type, you know, eat the root of this certain plant and it will cure cure this mysterious
lump illness, this sort of thing.
And
and we begin to question like, okay, is this actually helping
(07:32):
people? And is this,
what what what is
actually being done? Can we know this scientifically?
And
the studies are
attempted. And they are kind of, like,
initially,
okay, this is really good.
And, yeah, but then there might be some, like, questions of the efficacy and things like this.
(07:56):
Double blind studies start to become more common, and we start to see, like, okay, like a lot of the things that people are prescribing here aren't actually helping them. So we see this
arise of, you know, initially, I guess it was
futility. Nothing can be done. Then we we get to the stage of like, okay, yeah, we can do some surgeries. We've got some basic forms of medicine,
(08:18):
perhaps chemotherapy as well as starting to enter the picture. And so timeframes we're talking the 1800,
early 1900 here.
So there's some hope. Then we get into the study era where we're actually studying what efficacy do these drugs have
and mastectomies
and
mammography.
So, you know, screening for breast cancer and things like this. And the stats aren't very good. So we start seeing, okay, this this need for caution from doctors arising and from even
(08:49):
palliative care becoming a viable
kind of option to to not treat people, but to at least make the end of their lives
better rather than just continual hope of and and
putting in these really toxic chemicals into the body because chemotherapy are they essentially just toxic chemicals
that are going into the body to
(09:11):
target, you would hope,
specific
cells that are replicating in an unhelpful manner in a
cancer manner.
But there is certainly a lot of side effects and
damage that is also done to other parts of the body. So we see this caution arising, but then eventually we start to see, okay,
the the science, the medicine gets even better.
(09:34):
The chemotherapy
in targeted certain ways
of
special types of drugs on special types of cancer arising.
And
we're we're kind of having breakthroughs, I guess. But there's still this kind of caution that was being there. And people are starting, like, to demand drugs. Hey. Hey. I need this thing. I want this thing.
(09:55):
And this is combined with rising cancer rates of certain things. And as humans are living longer,
cancer becomes a large, greater killer of people in comparison to
other types of things like polio, smallpox and stuff like that.
And, and they're living living longer lifespans. And so cancer
(10:15):
tends to develop more in older people. So we start to see that it's killing more people.
And we have this kind of demands come back to where this activism occurs. And this is particularly, I would say, from the 19 fifties to
the 2000s,
especially prominent in the AIDS era,
where
a very similar phenomena occurred where people were demanding drugs,
(10:39):
like they're like, I'm going to die in 3 months time, I don't give a shit about
if this has,
you know, a,
an FDA approval of,
you know, 98%
efficacy or whatever, like, just give me the drug. I am willing to take the risk. I know it might not save me, but I need something. And so we see a very similar phenomena occur in certain types of cancer where people like, just give me the drug. I don't want I don't care about the study. I don't care about the stats.
(11:09):
Just just give me this. I'm willing to try anything.
So we see this real
swinging back and forth over the ages of
yes, we can cure this or we can
help
prevent this or we can remediate this to
okay, well, perhaps we're going too far, perhaps we're actually not helping people and making things worse. And this this tide goes over. So
(11:34):
funnily enough, I actually believe the best persons person to treat someone is yourself in a certain way. So knowledge,
this particular
knowledge,
or perhaps
a better way of saying that is a very important part of the decision making of how to treat someone is yourself.
And so a dose of skepticism by the lay public with regards to what you're being told
(11:59):
is actually pretty healthy, I think,
because the medical advice
that some of these people were talking about in this book is batshit crazy. And it's batshit crazy in in hindsight.
But I think also you could say
in the moment
there was there were certainly people questioning other doctors questioning
(12:21):
certain types of,
common knowledge. This is how you treat something. So for example,
radical mastectomies were a very common phenomena in the, I'm going to say like the 19,
early 1900.
And so for those who don't know, a mastectomy is where you're cutting into the breast to remove breast cancer
(12:42):
and in in particular tumor. Now what some doctors were doing a lot of doctors were doing, and
the prominent
person behind this theory
was that
you need to was his name was Halstead. I've forgotten his first name. There's a lot of names in this book.
Halstead was saying we need to cut in as deep as possible remove all lingering traces of the cancer.
(13:08):
And this is this is the way to treat these people. They will go into remission more, they'll be able to live longer lives. Sure. We're kind of disfiguring them in some cases.
But, though, in most of the cases, but we're we're saving their life. And so what these radical radical mastectomies would do so even if the cancer was, you know, just in the the fleshy part of the breast,
(13:29):
he he would be cutting down into underneath the arm to remove the lymph node.
He would be cutting even into parts of the collarbone
to to,
you know, get out any lingering traces of cancer there. And so what it would do to a lot of women was just ruin their bodies, you know, these literally just removing parts of their bodies. And so they would end up with like these hunched in shoulders,
(13:53):
severe,
think of all the all the crazy
pain that you received
from that afterwards by by having a hunched in back and things like this. So
the
we can see in hindsight, Rosetta radical mastectomy is like bad idea. And it didn't even
particularly
help. It might have saved a couple people but on average, radical
(14:16):
mastectomies
were were not helpful. We can also see, you know, don't get me started on bloodletting
and putting doses of radium into the breast to
to kill the cancer, which it did kill the cancer and then, you know, also
develop cancer and other parts of the body because you've literally got radioactive
elements
(14:37):
in your body. So
what what what can you kind of take away from this world knowing your own body,
incentives for why a doctor might recommend or not recommend something
the poor outcomes for chronic illness treatment versus the fantastic outcomes of immediate life threatening emergency treatment.
So
(14:58):
there's there's plenty of like kind of just general knowledge things that you can come into
where
if even today, I believe if you if you're talking to a doctor
not taking their word as gospel because we see
they have the knowledge of averages of
of the scientific data of
(15:18):
how
a certain treatment will affect a certain person
on average.
But you are a very individual case. You know, your body a lot better than they do. And so
I think working with them is probably the best way. And if something is off and they're recommending radical mastectomies
and you're unsure about that or just, you know, it's so this is such a tricky topic. So, so tricky. And and this applies to the researchers as well. So
(15:49):
a lot of this book is about the researchers who are trying to create breakthroughs to find ways to treat people with cancer.
And there's once again prominent figures
throughout the decades. I'm not going to be able to list them all.
And
once again, this is very focused on the American side of things. So it's, you know, he doesn't talk about the the pioneering
(16:13):
cancer person in Germany, for example, or Australia because
it's an American book
is focusing on them. So
the
what we kind of see, for example, is that a lot of scientists, they need to trust in themselves
rather than the prevailing
general theory of of how a cancer spreads or how it reacts or how it develops,
(16:36):
of
trusting in their observations of deductive reasoning.
Okay,
this drug affects this type of cancer. This type of cancer is related to this gene or this gene,
has similarities with this one, but it's slightly different. So another drug which is similar, you know, perhaps could cause this reaction, etcetera, etcetera.
(16:58):
And even just some faith and taking some action of actually doing something
to
to a trial to to if you've got a theory, like just working on it and despite the push pushback, just going forward with it. So,
you know,
they had to trust the data because of the long lag effect of
(17:18):
and sorry, with with data, even data can be so tricky because
one of the things that causes cancer is smoking. We know this now.
In the 1950s, this was not known, this was very much up for debate.
And one of the things that happened was essentially a lot of soldiers went to war.
In war, you need stimulants
(17:39):
to get through the tough time. So a lot of soldiers would start smoking.
They brought back this habit after war, World War 2 in particular, but World War 1 as well.
And this proliferated
throughout the society as as general because smoking is a very
social habit. And this is
probably the main benefit from it is of having social connections with people.
(18:03):
This spread throughout not just from young male soldiers, but to the elderly and then eventually to women.
And we see, you know, huge,
pick up of the smoking rates over time.
We start to see questions of, okay, there are a lot of lung cancer developing, like what's causing this? But people weren't sure because,
(18:24):
one, it takes a long time for it to develop. So smoking was already
in society. So it wasn't just just an easy cause and effects because it it has taken place over like 2 decades, 3 decades.
And then there was obfuscation
by the
actual tobacco companies themselves.
Check out the book review I did of Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Aresky and someone else can't remember his name.
(18:50):
Shocking. And this book also talks about this as well of
the disgusting behavior of tobacco companies
in in hiding data. And,
you know, this is one of those cases where you have to,
you have to,
as a scientist and researcher,
trust in yourself
(19:11):
and
and take faith. Like, honestly, it's you were talking about science and data, but
taking faith in a theory of
testing Petri dishes 1000 of times getting 1000 of negative results, all in the hope that you will make that one off discovery of
penicillin
type nature.
And,
(19:32):
yeah, it's it's so crazy just to see, you know, finding that right,
the right key to bind the right protein to a right specific
specific cell,
or things like this. It's it's crazy, the amount of
nuances that goes into the research as well. So
knowledge is hard to trust. What what can you do?
(19:55):
Well, the key across history of
cancer seems to be finding it early,
whilst it's local and yet to spread.
This is true of basically every illness I imagine. And
are there any ways
where it would be better to let it develop, you know, perhaps only if it's growing, and it's better to let it let it develop a bit. So it's easier to actually cut it out
(20:20):
if you're getting surgery.
But basically,
no, you want to find it as
soon as possible. And this is one of the sad things about cancer.
It's a very slow,
it's very, very slow, hard thing to treat.
And that's because it can also adapt
(20:40):
to drugs. So you were always kind of fighting a losing battle.
I actually really feel for doctors and companies whilst reading this and patients, obviously, it's terrible to to have have cancer to get it.
They get lambasted for being too cautious
when people are dying and willing to try anything. So they're like, okay, well,
(21:02):
we'll fine. We'll give you the drug. They don't actually say that it's actually a lot more
complicated. They'll they'll
still put the reins on, but eventually they'll stop
putting a drug out
or trying a new trial, for example,
of a radical
chemotherapy where they would just dose patients long after the
(21:22):
initial results were positive.
But they were really just trying to eradicate it to its utmost degree
to get all signs of cancer gone and even continuing it after all signs of cancer are gone. And then people are like, you're killing people. You're you're unnecessarily
dosing them with toxic shit.
(21:42):
You're gonna kill them. So it's like, what the fuck, man? How do I how do, like, how do you treat this thing? How do you
you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. And desperate people and grief stricken people will absolutely lash out. This is the life and death we're talking about here, the
most important,
kind of thing that that a person can go through. So,
(22:03):
you know, are you willing to cause extra suffer suffering in the hope for a cure? We we see many instances of of doctors
having to make that decision, and
and trialing this and seeing that, yes, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And,
you know,
how is the patient and even indeed, how's the doctor really to know
(22:27):
if if they're going overboard with the treatment?
We have to trust in the
we don't have to trust. Trusting in the scientific data is generally a smart thing to do if the studies are well conducted and over the long period of time. But one of individual result or even
individual results
(22:47):
will not necessarily be a great thing. And we we we see, for example, a
South African doctor who had these great breakthroughs and was,
you know, doing all these fantastic things. When people actually went and looked at his data, he'd made it all up. It was just complete bullshit. So,
you know, big takeaway, big takeaway, okay. Cancer as a whole.
(23:10):
It has been a slow excruciating
attrition war.
Breakthroughs
that that happen make a difference for sure. But usually they are highly specific
individual types of cancer. And we can kind of see in some of the graphs that are on the screen now that
over the decades, you know, the mortality rate will maybe drop from 20 to 10%
(23:33):
for
certain types of cancers, brain and nervous system here.
We had a big drop with lung, trachea and bronchus, and that was pretty much just because people stopped smoking.
All other types of cancers, the mortality rate, you know, it's
it's also complicated by that people live longer. And so,
(23:53):
you know, are you measuring the the deaths
per population
which will rise or are you measuring
life extension span
after treatment
or are you measuring
quality of life hours after this? You know, there's so many different ways you could could measure this.
So
the the things that do help,
(24:15):
is pretty much prevention.
Prevention is better than a cure.
So no smoking
people get your pap smears for the women out there, for the men
over 45
or 45 or an over get those colonoscopy is don't don't avoid searching for it because
your best chance of surviving is finding it early.
(24:37):
Curing cancer
is likely
not going to happen anytime soon. People have been talking about this for centuries.
The cure is around the corner in the hopes that there will be a polio vaccine type thing to to cure people of this.
From what I gained from this book, that's unlikely to happen.
One, because cancer, is
(25:01):
very
tricky in that it will
it will
you can use drugs on it, and it will adapt to those drugs. It will find a way of
evolving with you. And look, viruses can do this as well. So
that's that's not to say that there can't be a vaccine perhaps one day that will do something, but
(25:24):
I think it's likely only to come from a super smart,
flexible drug creation industry
that also is very alert to finding
cancer
and
abnormal
growths in the body very quickly. So you need a huge industry
to be able to create the specific drugs to specific people
(25:48):
and cases and also
widespread technology
of finding cancer very early in the body. And man, that is that's going to take a long time to happen. Long, long time to happen.
So, yeah, you know, all the gains that have been made have been on very rare cancers, which were amenable to a a certain type of drug or a,
(26:12):
you know, better way of doing surgery. But
it that there hasn't been that much in terms of like
we're we're close to curing it or we're we're we're winning the battle. It's
a you're winning the battle, but goddamn, there are a lot of casualties along the way.
Very, very sadly enough. So let's jump onto the author, some extra details. Mukherjee, born in India in 1970.
(26:36):
He studied medicine in the US,
before going down the, you know, kind of crazy PhD masters sort of path in subjects that I have no chance of pronouncing. So I'm not gonna even try. He's written some other books on genetics
as well. But this was kind of like the big dog, the prominent book,
this being the emperor of all maladies.
(26:56):
And the wording you'll find within is is rather evocative
as kind of indicated by a bi biography. So he'll talk about, you know, ruthless
in inexorable
in inexorable,
what a word, persistence in dose after dose after dose when he's talking about treatments,
the heartbreak of treating
(27:16):
a patient of young kids,
especially with with cancer, you know, distraught parents, unable to do anything
of the
feelings of being on a cancer ward of the researchers in the dungeons of the,
ostracism
of
of people researching sort of things like when you're lingering around death, that's not particularly a nice place to be.
(27:41):
The personal touch in this book is what
made me feel the most in terms of
really getting a sense of what cancer is.
And for example, during the Victorian era of surgery,
I was talking about just cutting people open. And I was just on my bed reading, had my shirt off, and I looked down at my abs. And I'm just like, goddamn, I'm so
(28:03):
flimsy. Like this flesh body
is so you know, you think of getting into a car accident. It's just like, yeah, you know, limbs can go off brain smooshed,
all that sort of thing. And then it's even more horrifying when you think like I can be attacked within my own body can be killing me. And that's a lot of what
(28:24):
he doesn't go too much into the psychology
of either the
cure trying to cure it for doctors or the psychology of patients. But,
you know, very, very hard to take in when you're when your own body is what is what is killing you.
Yeah. Terrifying.
Kudos to the people who can hack being in the medical industry.
(28:45):
It's given me a bit more appreciation
of the
toughness
of
the damned if you do damned if you don't sort of things they have to face
frontline workers in a in a job. And when I say frontline workers, in this case, I'm talking about the surgeons, the nurses, the researchers, those sorts of things, perhaps researchers on frontline in a way they are,
(29:07):
you know,
being able to tolerate the suffering of small children day in day out
of,
of being in a hospital,
I personally would find intolerable,
you know,
the minor amount of time I spent in hospital with my mom,
this last year,
(29:28):
was was not fun at all. And man, kudos to them. So
the the crazy thing would even be the
the bureaucracy of trying to treat people. And if you're very fixated that this is this is the way to treat someone,
this new drug is going to work.
We've seen good test results and then being held up by
(29:50):
bureaucracy of
the government of your own hospital
of your own colleagues.
That that would drive me batshit insane. You know, I felt that
bureaucracy just in working in a mine site and that was only related to like, you know, coal productivity and efficiency. So God knows what it'd be like when it's life and death on the line.
(30:14):
Summary, you'll learn a lot from reading this. And I got a great idea of how terrifying cancer is, but also gratitude that if you have it now,
or
or as is likely to happen in your lifetime to develop it,
because I think it affects, you know, kind of 1 and 2 people over over a certain age,
(30:35):
the
you're you're certainly got to be glad that you're born in this time rather than 20 years ago, rather than 40 years ago, rather than 100 years ago, and certainly rather than 2000 years ago. So
thankfully it is moving forward
that knowledge science,
medical
interventions
do help.
And we are getting better. It's just a very, very slow pace. And
(31:00):
making inroads into this cruel disease is
very, very hard. And it's it's not
breakthroughs. And
there are breakthroughs, but they are small steps on the long, long path to to,
you know, hopefully one day curing
it. I did get a bit bored in some sections of this book, to be honest, because
(31:22):
it's, you know, he'll he'll get a little bit too deep into the
the genetics
into the actual mechanisms of the replication
of
this is, you know, ARC, blah, blah, blah. This is
ALS did it.
And so there were some sections where I'm like reading it, Myers getting a bit cross like, oh, jeez. And and, you know, it is 470 pages. So
(31:44):
there were quite a few sections of that. So,
it's not exactly fun reading.
I'd put this in the kind of camp of informative
to just the right amount.
I don't think I needed much more in terms of the science,
and the actual
knowledge of how the genes work and things like this.
And I certainly did enjoy more the personal aspects of the book. So overall, I'm giving a 6 and a half out of 10, The Emperor of All Maladies by Sudhakar Mukherjee.
(32:12):
It's a decent book. And if you want to learn about cancer,
I, you know, I haven't read many books on cancer, if none before. So,
this is a decent starting place, I would say. In terms of similar books recommendations,
probably the most similar book I've read is the noonday demon by Andrew Solomon, which is on
(32:32):
all about depression.
Very, very similar style and length of the book,
has the personal touch whilst also talking about
the, the history of it and, you know, the kind of up to date medicine or where where we roughly are. You know, this book doesn't talk much about treatments in 2010 because it's more the history of it, which is probably more of what I appreciated if it was a book just on,
(32:58):
you know, what's the latest of cancer news in 2010?
I would have been bored out of my mind.
And also knowing
from this book, the latest
and greatest in cancer treatments in 2010
is probably ridiculously out of date 15 years later here in 2025. So, yeah, there we go.
Richard Rhodes making the atomic bomb
(33:20):
Also, you know, not related to cancer, but I think style wise probably is very similar.
Okay. Value for value.
This is a value for value podcast. I do all this upfront free anytime
every available for anyone anywhere. And there's never gonna be ads nor sponsorships on this. So I just ask that
for any value that you get from this, you are just return it in kind.
(33:43):
And,
there's been up multiple ways of doing this time, talent and treasure time
sharing us with someone
of telling them about the book review channel of even going to check out any of the other mere mortals podcasts because there are quite a few that we put out both as audio and video versions.
Talent, give me some book recommendations. What's a book that you enjoy that you think I might in,
(34:07):
enjoy as well? Or your thoughts on this book if you have read it? I'd love to hear all of those things.
Write it in a comment or reach out via any of the social media links down below. And then finally, Treasure, there's PayPal link down below if you want to send through some money to help support
the show for all the costs that it costs costs that it has for hosting these things, buying new equipment,
(34:30):
hopefully one day, you know,
treat actually not hopefully hopefully not one day treating any cancer that I develop, but an extra couple of bucks would certainly go well towards that.
Where
I am live here, I've got a couple of people in there. Michael Nelson's,
says opinions on v r I l. I actually have no idea what Vril is,
(34:53):
so you might have to elaborate on that. Michael. I'll quickly look this up while I'm addressing the other comment, which is Cole McCormick.
And he says cancer is wild. And he would know,
because unfortunately, his father passed away.
When was it? It was in August or was it July Cole? So about 6 months ago.
(35:14):
And, you know, he got he got the up
upfront experience,
which is very, very sad.
Real. This book was the power of the coming race.
What is the hell is coming race? There's something about master race. Okay. I'm not sure this is related to cancer, mate. So I don't
know. I thought this might be a it's a fictitious secret society that is said to have existed in Germany in the early to mid 20th century.
(35:42):
Never heard of it, mate. That's actually a new one for me. So
no opinions, no opinions on real.
I am live here 11 am Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday,
as always. So would love for you to come join in with me. And what's coming up in the future?
Next week, I'll be doing my translation episode on the alchemist and who alchemista.
(36:05):
So I'll be giving you some thoughts on
translations.
I have just finished reading
the
no. I haven't just finished reading.
I am almost finished reading The Man Who is Thursday by GK Chesterton.
I am reading the Blue Ocean Strategy
by
I don't know those people's names yet, but
(36:27):
that has one of the wildest things I've ever seen in a book before and not in a good way. So
get prepared for that one.
What else have I got? Yeah, those those are the main ones that come to mind for the moment. So
plenty of stuff coming up in the future. 1 will also be dropping an episode here and there. And I'm gonna wrap it up here. Thank you so much for joining in, and I really do hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Kyron out. Bye.
No easy wins, only tough decisions.
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mere Mortals book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 22nd
January
2025.
(00:20):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast which reveals why Cancer is the greatest zodiac sign of all time.
No. It's actually Pisces, which is what I am. But no. Well, we're not gonna be talking about zodiac signs today, but we will be talking about Cancer. We have this book here, The Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer by Siddhartha
Mukherjee.
(00:40):
So this book was published in 2010.
It's 4 70 pages in length,
in terms of the actual writing. And then there's probably another 100 ish pages of index
and notes and
etcetera, things that you usually find in in medical books or things that reference a lot,
even history books. This probably took me 15 hours reading. And the reason for this is there's no charts in here. And it is a dense boy. It is just thick, thick, thick, thick,
(01:10):
in terms of the writing on the page and the size of the writing. Man, it took me a while to to really get through this book. So it's a a history of cancer throughout the centuries but particularly the 20th
century. So it really does focus the kind of periods from the 1900 to the 2000.
And it details breakthroughs in prevention, cure, chemotherapy,
(01:32):
surgery,
genetics, knowledge, understanding
of what cancer is.
And it's told from an American
POV, American point of view. So
we we do get a lot of,
I guess, statistics and stories from America, even though it is a worldwide
disease. And he does touch upon
(01:52):
researchers in other countries, for example, who made breakthroughs or people, you know, England in the earliest
earlier centuries in the 19th, where they were
first doing surgeries, and you know, the as it like the vaudeville type era where there was this
surgeries and like, it was almost in a stadium type thing. So students could be looking down upon it, things like that. So he has this personal touch,
(02:18):
that runs throughout the books of his interactions with himself, with students, with patients, with scientists,
who discovered, you know, the next step forward and notable activists,
pushing for change. Hence why this book is
a biography even though it's not a biography of a person. So it's a history, but he kinda treats cancer as if it has
(02:39):
some human like qualities. And you'll find the writing in this book is not only scientific.
It does have these,
relatable
touches to actual people and things like this. So let's jump into the themes and questions that come from this book. And
one of the things that came up was, you know, what's required to treat a patient well?
(03:01):
And for me, I would have said it was probably, you know, 95%
knowledge,
understanding
of
your craft. And in particular, we're talking about cancer here. So if you had gallbladder cancer,
95% of it would be how to treat gallbladder cancer, the knowledge of how that works,
(03:21):
drugs, surgery, all these sorts of things, risk profiles of people, and then maybe 5% of listening to the actual patient of
who it is.
Now, I think,
that has actually
that previous assumption I had is switched a lot. And
the the theme that I really got about this was the this medical knowledge part of that, the 95%.
(03:45):
And can you actually really know that much about cancer? How
how how much of a surety can you have that your doctors
is up to date with the knowledge? Is the knowledge even good? So let's jump into, I suppose, what we learned throughout this book. So
starting across, you know, from the very beginning across time,
the state of that of art evolves knowledge is built upon previous knowledge. So
(04:10):
the first knowledge of cancer was basically
acceptance of futility. And so we have a couple of references to
the hieroglyphics
and, and
the parchments that some Egyptians were riding on some of the earliest Greek people were talking about this hence,
kakonos,
which is cancer
(04:30):
in in,
in Greek, and hence the the little crab, which is on the front of this book here.
And so that was the the kind of originates. And it was very much just like
if you have this, these kind of symptoms, like a big lump in the side here, you're screwed. Like there's nothing that can be done for you.
(04:51):
When we
get into I suppose,
dare I say, more scientific age where people are coming up with more theories of this black bile and there's these 4 biles and the black one is what produces cancer.
So we're starting to see, okay, there's maybe some explanations for why these certain things are happening in people's bodies. In in particular, I haven't particularly defined cancer here. He goes into it into the book, but it's essentially
(05:18):
unlimited growth
of,
cells replicating.
And now several cells are meant to replicate, but it's when it hits this kind of unlimited exponential stage
without any of the tendency of of
of other genes to say, hey, you know, put the limit on here, anti tumor causing genes and things like this. And those are deactivated
(05:40):
or
things like this. So,
yeah, the cancer is complicated. There's very many different types when it comes to, you know, leukemia,
ones that affect the lungs, ones that are prostate, you know, there's basically you can get cancer in every type and situation in your body. So
he mostly focuses, I suppose, on leukemia
(06:04):
and
metastatic
cancer just as a general, which is where the cancer spreads throughout your body to other areas.
And and breast cancer, I'd say those were the the kind of main ones that were going over in this book. I don't even remember or recall a single instance of him talking about brain cancer, for example. So
it's,
(06:24):
he's talking about these sorts of things. Now we start to get into past those rude, rare, rudimentary treatments or
actually those were just rudimentary
ideas, knowledge, philosophies, theories of what cancer is. And we get to these rudimentary,
attempts at ailing these. And so this is where we're starting to see surgery, for example,
(06:47):
where people
are actually surgeons are cutting into the body and trying to remove these tumors and things like this.
And
that was probably, I would say, more in the kind of 17th,
18th century.
In the 19th century is where we start to see that, okay, maybe we can treat this chemically as well
and that there is perhaps some options of of treating these people.
(07:11):
And we're also getting to these
questions of like the efficacy of this. And of course, before this, there was also the the witch doctor type, you know, eat the root of this certain plant and it will cure cure this mysterious
lump illness, this sort of thing.
And
and we begin to question like, okay, is this actually helping
(07:32):
people? And is this,
what what what is
actually being done? Can we know this scientifically?
And
the studies are
attempted. And they are kind of, like,
initially,
okay, this is really good.
And, yeah, but then there might be some, like, questions of the efficacy and things like this.
(07:56):
Double blind studies start to become more common, and we start to see, like, okay, like a lot of the things that people are prescribing here aren't actually helping them. So we see this
arise of, you know, initially, I guess it was
futility. Nothing can be done. Then we we get to the stage of like, okay, yeah, we can do some surgeries. We've got some basic forms of medicine,
(08:18):
perhaps chemotherapy as well as starting to enter the picture. And so timeframes we're talking the 1800,
early 1900 here.
So there's some hope. Then we get into the study era where we're actually studying what efficacy do these drugs have
and mastectomies
and
mammography.
So, you know, screening for breast cancer and things like this. And the stats aren't very good. So we start seeing, okay, this this need for caution from doctors arising and from even
(08:49):
palliative care becoming a viable
kind of option to to not treat people, but to at least make the end of their lives
better rather than just continual hope of and and
putting in these really toxic chemicals into the body because chemotherapy are they essentially just toxic chemicals
that are going into the body to
(09:11):
target, you would hope,
specific
cells that are replicating in an unhelpful manner in a
cancer manner.
But there is certainly a lot of side effects and
damage that is also done to other parts of the body. So we see this caution arising, but then eventually we start to see, okay,
the the science, the medicine gets even better.
(09:34):
The chemotherapy
in targeted certain ways
of
special types of drugs on special types of cancer arising.
And
we're we're kind of having breakthroughs, I guess. But there's still this kind of caution that was being there. And people are starting, like, to demand drugs. Hey. Hey. I need this thing. I want this thing.
(09:55):
And this is combined with rising cancer rates of certain things. And as humans are living longer,
cancer becomes a large, greater killer of people in comparison to
other types of things like polio, smallpox and stuff like that.
And, and they're living living longer lifespans. And so cancer
(10:15):
tends to develop more in older people. So we start to see that it's killing more people.
And we have this kind of demands come back to where this activism occurs. And this is particularly, I would say, from the 19 fifties to
the 2000s,
especially prominent in the AIDS era,
where
a very similar phenomena occurred where people were demanding drugs,
(10:39):
like they're like, I'm going to die in 3 months time, I don't give a shit about
if this has,
you know, a,
an FDA approval of,
you know, 98%
efficacy or whatever, like, just give me the drug. I am willing to take the risk. I know it might not save me, but I need something. And so we see a very similar phenomena occur in certain types of cancer where people like, just give me the drug. I don't want I don't care about the study. I don't care about the stats.
(11:09):
Just just give me this. I'm willing to try anything.
So we see this real
swinging back and forth over the ages of
yes, we can cure this or we can
help
prevent this or we can remediate this to
okay, well, perhaps we're going too far, perhaps we're actually not helping people and making things worse. And this this tide goes over. So
(11:34):
funnily enough, I actually believe the best persons person to treat someone is yourself in a certain way. So knowledge,
this particular
knowledge,
or perhaps
a better way of saying that is a very important part of the decision making of how to treat someone is yourself.
And so a dose of skepticism by the lay public with regards to what you're being told
(11:59):
is actually pretty healthy, I think,
because the medical advice
that some of these people were talking about in this book is batshit crazy. And it's batshit crazy in in hindsight.
But I think also you could say
in the moment
there was there were certainly people questioning other doctors questioning
(12:21):
certain types of,
common knowledge. This is how you treat something. So for example,
radical mastectomies were a very common phenomena in the, I'm going to say like the 19,
early 1900.
And so for those who don't know, a mastectomy is where you're cutting into the breast to remove breast cancer
(12:42):
and in in particular tumor. Now what some doctors were doing a lot of doctors were doing, and
the prominent
person behind this theory
was that
you need to was his name was Halstead. I've forgotten his first name. There's a lot of names in this book.
Halstead was saying we need to cut in as deep as possible remove all lingering traces of the cancer.
(13:08):
And this is this is the way to treat these people. They will go into remission more, they'll be able to live longer lives. Sure. We're kind of disfiguring them in some cases.
But, though, in most of the cases, but we're we're saving their life. And so what these radical radical mastectomies would do so even if the cancer was, you know, just in the the fleshy part of the breast,
(13:29):
he he would be cutting down into underneath the arm to remove the lymph node.
He would be cutting even into parts of the collarbone
to to,
you know, get out any lingering traces of cancer there. And so what it would do to a lot of women was just ruin their bodies, you know, these literally just removing parts of their bodies. And so they would end up with like these hunched in shoulders,
(13:53):
severe,
think of all the all the crazy
pain that you received
from that afterwards by by having a hunched in back and things like this. So
the
we can see in hindsight, Rosetta radical mastectomy is like bad idea. And it didn't even
particularly
help. It might have saved a couple people but on average, radical
(14:16):
mastectomies
were were not helpful. We can also see, you know, don't get me started on bloodletting
and putting doses of radium into the breast to
to kill the cancer, which it did kill the cancer and then, you know, also
develop cancer and other parts of the body because you've literally got radioactive
elements
(14:37):
in your body. So
what what what can you kind of take away from this world knowing your own body,
incentives for why a doctor might recommend or not recommend something
the poor outcomes for chronic illness treatment versus the fantastic outcomes of immediate life threatening emergency treatment.
So
(14:58):
there's there's plenty of like kind of just general knowledge things that you can come into
where
if even today, I believe if you if you're talking to a doctor
not taking their word as gospel because we see
they have the knowledge of averages of
of the scientific data of
(15:18):
how
a certain treatment will affect a certain person
on average.
But you are a very individual case. You know, your body a lot better than they do. And so
I think working with them is probably the best way. And if something is off and they're recommending radical mastectomies
and you're unsure about that or just, you know, it's so this is such a tricky topic. So, so tricky. And and this applies to the researchers as well. So
(15:49):
a lot of this book is about the researchers who are trying to create breakthroughs to find ways to treat people with cancer.
And there's once again prominent figures
throughout the decades. I'm not going to be able to list them all.
And
once again, this is very focused on the American side of things. So it's, you know, he doesn't talk about the the pioneering
(16:13):
cancer person in Germany, for example, or Australia because
it's an American book
is focusing on them. So
the
what we kind of see, for example, is that a lot of scientists, they need to trust in themselves
rather than the prevailing
general theory of of how a cancer spreads or how it reacts or how it develops,
(16:36):
of
trusting in their observations of deductive reasoning.
Okay,
this drug affects this type of cancer. This type of cancer is related to this gene or this gene,
has similarities with this one, but it's slightly different. So another drug which is similar, you know, perhaps could cause this reaction, etcetera, etcetera.
(16:58):
And even just some faith and taking some action of actually doing something
to
to a trial to to if you've got a theory, like just working on it and despite the push pushback, just going forward with it. So,
you know,
they had to trust the data because of the long lag effect of
(17:18):
and sorry, with with data, even data can be so tricky because
one of the things that causes cancer is smoking. We know this now.
In the 1950s, this was not known, this was very much up for debate.
And one of the things that happened was essentially a lot of soldiers went to war.
In war, you need stimulants
(17:39):
to get through the tough time. So a lot of soldiers would start smoking.
They brought back this habit after war, World War 2 in particular, but World War 1 as well.
And this proliferated
throughout the society as as general because smoking is a very
social habit. And this is
probably the main benefit from it is of having social connections with people.
(18:03):
This spread throughout not just from young male soldiers, but to the elderly and then eventually to women.
And we see, you know, huge,
pick up of the smoking rates over time.
We start to see questions of, okay, there are a lot of lung cancer developing, like what's causing this? But people weren't sure because,
(18:24):
one, it takes a long time for it to develop. So smoking was already
in society. So it wasn't just just an easy cause and effects because it it has taken place over like 2 decades, 3 decades.
And then there was obfuscation
by the
actual tobacco companies themselves.
Check out the book review I did of Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Aresky and someone else can't remember his name.
(18:50):
Shocking. And this book also talks about this as well of
the disgusting behavior of tobacco companies
in in hiding data. And,
you know, this is one of those cases where you have to,
you have to,
as a scientist and researcher,
trust in yourself
(19:11):
and
and take faith. Like, honestly, it's you were talking about science and data, but
taking faith in a theory of
testing Petri dishes 1000 of times getting 1000 of negative results, all in the hope that you will make that one off discovery of
penicillin
type nature.
And,
(19:32):
yeah, it's it's so crazy just to see, you know, finding that right,
the right key to bind the right protein to a right specific
specific cell,
or things like this. It's it's crazy, the amount of
nuances that goes into the research as well. So
knowledge is hard to trust. What what can you do?
(19:55):
Well, the key across history of
cancer seems to be finding it early,
whilst it's local and yet to spread.
This is true of basically every illness I imagine. And
are there any ways
where it would be better to let it develop, you know, perhaps only if it's growing, and it's better to let it let it develop a bit. So it's easier to actually cut it out
(20:20):
if you're getting surgery.
But basically,
no, you want to find it as
soon as possible. And this is one of the sad things about cancer.
It's a very slow,
it's very, very slow, hard thing to treat.
And that's because it can also adapt
(20:40):
to drugs. So you were always kind of fighting a losing battle.
I actually really feel for doctors and companies whilst reading this and patients, obviously, it's terrible to to have have cancer to get it.
They get lambasted for being too cautious
when people are dying and willing to try anything. So they're like, okay, well,
(21:02):
we'll fine. We'll give you the drug. They don't actually say that it's actually a lot more
complicated. They'll they'll
still put the reins on, but eventually they'll stop
putting a drug out
or trying a new trial, for example,
of a radical
chemotherapy where they would just dose patients long after the
(21:22):
initial results were positive.
But they were really just trying to eradicate it to its utmost degree
to get all signs of cancer gone and even continuing it after all signs of cancer are gone. And then people are like, you're killing people. You're you're unnecessarily
dosing them with toxic shit.
(21:42):
You're gonna kill them. So it's like, what the fuck, man? How do I how do, like, how do you treat this thing? How do you
you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. And desperate people and grief stricken people will absolutely lash out. This is the life and death we're talking about here, the
most important,
kind of thing that that a person can go through. So,
(22:03):
you know, are you willing to cause extra suffer suffering in the hope for a cure? We we see many instances of of doctors
having to make that decision, and
and trialing this and seeing that, yes, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And,
you know,
how is the patient and even indeed, how's the doctor really to know
(22:27):
if if they're going overboard with the treatment?
We have to trust in the
we don't have to trust. Trusting in the scientific data is generally a smart thing to do if the studies are well conducted and over the long period of time. But one of individual result or even
individual results
(22:47):
will not necessarily be a great thing. And we we we see, for example, a
South African doctor who had these great breakthroughs and was,
you know, doing all these fantastic things. When people actually went and looked at his data, he'd made it all up. It was just complete bullshit. So,
you know, big takeaway, big takeaway, okay. Cancer as a whole.
(23:10):
It has been a slow excruciating
attrition war.
Breakthroughs
that that happen make a difference for sure. But usually they are highly specific
individual types of cancer. And we can kind of see in some of the graphs that are on the screen now that
over the decades, you know, the mortality rate will maybe drop from 20 to 10%
(23:33):
for
certain types of cancers, brain and nervous system here.
We had a big drop with lung, trachea and bronchus, and that was pretty much just because people stopped smoking.
All other types of cancers, the mortality rate, you know, it's
it's also complicated by that people live longer. And so,
(23:53):
you know, are you measuring the the deaths
per population
which will rise or are you measuring
life extension span
after treatment
or are you measuring
quality of life hours after this? You know, there's so many different ways you could could measure this.
So
the the things that do help,
(24:15):
is pretty much prevention.
Prevention is better than a cure.
So no smoking
people get your pap smears for the women out there, for the men
over 45
or 45 or an over get those colonoscopy is don't don't avoid searching for it because
your best chance of surviving is finding it early.
(24:37):
Curing cancer
is likely
not going to happen anytime soon. People have been talking about this for centuries.
The cure is around the corner in the hopes that there will be a polio vaccine type thing to to cure people of this.
From what I gained from this book, that's unlikely to happen.
One, because cancer, is
(25:01):
very
tricky in that it will
it will
you can use drugs on it, and it will adapt to those drugs. It will find a way of
evolving with you. And look, viruses can do this as well. So
that's that's not to say that there can't be a vaccine perhaps one day that will do something, but
(25:24):
I think it's likely only to come from a super smart,
flexible drug creation industry
that also is very alert to finding
cancer
and
abnormal
growths in the body very quickly. So you need a huge industry
to be able to create the specific drugs to specific people
(25:48):
and cases and also
widespread technology
of finding cancer very early in the body. And man, that is that's going to take a long time to happen. Long, long time to happen.
So, yeah, you know, all the gains that have been made have been on very rare cancers, which were amenable to a a certain type of drug or a,
(26:12):
you know, better way of doing surgery. But
it that there hasn't been that much in terms of like
we're we're close to curing it or we're we're we're winning the battle. It's
a you're winning the battle, but goddamn, there are a lot of casualties along the way.
Very, very sadly enough. So let's jump onto the author, some extra details. Mukherjee, born in India in 1970.
(26:36):
He studied medicine in the US,
before going down the, you know, kind of crazy PhD masters sort of path in subjects that I have no chance of pronouncing. So I'm not gonna even try. He's written some other books on genetics
as well. But this was kind of like the big dog, the prominent book,
this being the emperor of all maladies.
(26:56):
And the wording you'll find within is is rather evocative
as kind of indicated by a bi biography. So he'll talk about, you know, ruthless
in inexorable
in inexorable,
what a word, persistence in dose after dose after dose when he's talking about treatments,
the heartbreak of treating
(27:16):
a patient of young kids,
especially with with cancer, you know, distraught parents, unable to do anything
of the
feelings of being on a cancer ward of the researchers in the dungeons of the,
ostracism
of
of people researching sort of things like when you're lingering around death, that's not particularly a nice place to be.
(27:41):
The personal touch in this book is what
made me feel the most in terms of
really getting a sense of what cancer is.
And for example, during the Victorian era of surgery,
I was talking about just cutting people open. And I was just on my bed reading, had my shirt off, and I looked down at my abs. And I'm just like, goddamn, I'm so
(28:03):
flimsy. Like this flesh body
is so you know, you think of getting into a car accident. It's just like, yeah, you know, limbs can go off brain smooshed,
all that sort of thing. And then it's even more horrifying when you think like I can be attacked within my own body can be killing me. And that's a lot of what
(28:24):
he doesn't go too much into the psychology
of either the
cure trying to cure it for doctors or the psychology of patients. But,
you know, very, very hard to take in when you're when your own body is what is what is killing you.
Yeah. Terrifying.
Kudos to the people who can hack being in the medical industry.
(28:45):
It's given me a bit more appreciation
of the
toughness
of
the damned if you do damned if you don't sort of things they have to face
frontline workers in a in a job. And when I say frontline workers, in this case, I'm talking about the surgeons, the nurses, the researchers, those sorts of things, perhaps researchers on frontline in a way they are,
(29:07):
you know,
being able to tolerate the suffering of small children day in day out
of,
of being in a hospital,
I personally would find intolerable,
you know,
the minor amount of time I spent in hospital with my mom,
this last year,
(29:28):
was was not fun at all. And man, kudos to them. So
the the crazy thing would even be the
the bureaucracy of trying to treat people. And if you're very fixated that this is this is the way to treat someone,
this new drug is going to work.
We've seen good test results and then being held up by
(29:50):
bureaucracy of
the government of your own hospital
of your own colleagues.
That that would drive me batshit insane. You know, I felt that
bureaucracy just in working in a mine site and that was only related to like, you know, coal productivity and efficiency. So God knows what it'd be like when it's life and death on the line.
(30:14):
Summary, you'll learn a lot from reading this. And I got a great idea of how terrifying cancer is, but also gratitude that if you have it now,
or
or as is likely to happen in your lifetime to develop it,
because I think it affects, you know, kind of 1 and 2 people over over a certain age,
(30:35):
the
you're you're certainly got to be glad that you're born in this time rather than 20 years ago, rather than 40 years ago, rather than 100 years ago, and certainly rather than 2000 years ago. So
thankfully it is moving forward
that knowledge science,
medical
interventions
do help.
And we are getting better. It's just a very, very slow pace. And
(31:00):
making inroads into this cruel disease is
very, very hard. And it's it's not
breakthroughs. And
there are breakthroughs, but they are small steps on the long, long path to to,
you know, hopefully one day curing
it. I did get a bit bored in some sections of this book, to be honest, because
(31:22):
it's, you know, he'll he'll get a little bit too deep into the
the genetics
into the actual mechanisms of the replication
of
this is, you know, ARC, blah, blah, blah. This is
ALS did it.
And so there were some sections where I'm like reading it, Myers getting a bit cross like, oh, jeez. And and, you know, it is 470 pages. So
(31:44):
there were quite a few sections of that. So,
it's not exactly fun reading.
I'd put this in the kind of camp of informative
to just the right amount.
I don't think I needed much more in terms of the science,
and the actual
knowledge of how the genes work and things like this.
And I certainly did enjoy more the personal aspects of the book. So overall, I'm giving a 6 and a half out of 10, The Emperor of All Maladies by Sudhakar Mukherjee.
(32:12):
It's a decent book. And if you want to learn about cancer,
I, you know, I haven't read many books on cancer, if none before. So,
this is a decent starting place, I would say. In terms of similar books recommendations,
probably the most similar book I've read is the noonday demon by Andrew Solomon, which is on
(32:32):
all about depression.
Very, very similar style and length of the book,
has the personal touch whilst also talking about
the, the history of it and, you know, the kind of up to date medicine or where where we roughly are. You know, this book doesn't talk much about treatments in 2010 because it's more the history of it, which is probably more of what I appreciated if it was a book just on,
(32:58):
you know, what's the latest of cancer news in 2010?
I would have been bored out of my mind.
And also knowing
from this book, the latest
and greatest in cancer treatments in 2010
is probably ridiculously out of date 15 years later here in 2025. So, yeah, there we go.
Richard Rhodes making the atomic bomb
(33:20):
Also, you know, not related to cancer, but I think style wise probably is very similar.
Okay. Value for value.
This is a value for value podcast. I do all this upfront free anytime
every available for anyone anywhere. And there's never gonna be ads nor sponsorships on this. So I just ask that
for any value that you get from this, you are just return it in kind.
(33:43):
And,
there's been up multiple ways of doing this time, talent and treasure time
sharing us with someone
of telling them about the book review channel of even going to check out any of the other mere mortals podcasts because there are quite a few that we put out both as audio and video versions.
Talent, give me some book recommendations. What's a book that you enjoy that you think I might in,
(34:07):
enjoy as well? Or your thoughts on this book if you have read it? I'd love to hear all of those things.
Write it in a comment or reach out via any of the social media links down below. And then finally, Treasure, there's PayPal link down below if you want to send through some money to help support
the show for all the costs that it costs costs that it has for hosting these things, buying new equipment,
(34:30):
hopefully one day, you know,
treat actually not hopefully hopefully not one day treating any cancer that I develop, but an extra couple of bucks would certainly go well towards that.
Where
I am live here, I've got a couple of people in there. Michael Nelson's,
says opinions on v r I l. I actually have no idea what Vril is,
(34:53):
so you might have to elaborate on that. Michael. I'll quickly look this up while I'm addressing the other comment, which is Cole McCormick.
And he says cancer is wild. And he would know,
because unfortunately, his father passed away.
When was it? It was in August or was it July Cole? So about 6 months ago.
(35:14):
And, you know, he got he got the up
upfront experience,
which is very, very sad.
Real. This book was the power of the coming race.
What is the hell is coming race? There's something about master race. Okay. I'm not sure this is related to cancer, mate. So I don't
know. I thought this might be a it's a fictitious secret society that is said to have existed in Germany in the early to mid 20th century.
(35:42):
Never heard of it, mate. That's actually a new one for me. So
no opinions, no opinions on real.
I am live here 11 am Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday,
as always. So would love for you to come join in with me. And what's coming up in the future?
Next week, I'll be doing my translation episode on the alchemist and who alchemista.
(36:05):
So I'll be giving you some thoughts on
translations.
I have just finished reading
the
no. I haven't just finished reading.
I am almost finished reading The Man Who is Thursday by GK Chesterton.
I am reading the Blue Ocean Strategy
by
I don't know those people's names yet, but
(36:27):
that has one of the wildest things I've ever seen in a book before and not in a good way. So
get prepared for that one.
What else have I got? Yeah, those those are the main ones that come to mind for the moment. So
plenty of stuff coming up in the future. 1 will also be dropping an episode here and there. And I'm gonna wrap it up here. Thank you so much for joining in, and I really do hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Kyron out. Bye.
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