The Philadelphia Chromosome A Genetic Mystery A Lethal Cancer And The Improbable Invention Of A Lifesaving Treatment
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| Author | : Jessica Wapner |
| Publisher | : The Experiment, LLC |
| Total Pages | : 345 |
| Release | : 2014-04-08 |
| Genre | : Health & Fitness |
| ISBN | : 1615191658 |
One of The Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year Philadelphia, 1959: A scientist scrutinizing a single human cell under a microscope detects a missing piece of DNA. That scientist, David Hungerford, had no way of knowing that he had stumbled upon the starting point of modern cancer research— the Philadelphia chromosome. It would take doctors and researchers around the world more than three decades to unravel the implications of this landmark discovery. In 1990, the Philadelphia chromosome was recognized as the sole cause of a deadly blood cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML. Cancer research would never be the same. Science journalist Jessica Wapner reconstructs more than forty years of crucial breakthroughs, clearly explains the science behind them, and pays tribute—with extensive original reporting, including more than thirty-five interviews—to the dozens of researchers, doctors, and patients with a direct role in this inspirational story. Their curiosity and determination would ultimately lead to a lifesaving treatment unlike anything before it. The Philadelphia Chromosome chronicles the remarkable change of fortune for the more than 70,000 people worldwide who are diagnosed with CML each year. It is a celebration of a rare triumph in the battle against cancer and a blueprint for future research, as doctors and scientists race to uncover and treat the genetic roots of a wide range of cancers.
| Author | : George Johnson |
| Publisher | : Vintage |
| Total Pages | : 305 |
| Release | : 2013-08-27 |
| Genre | : Medical |
| ISBN | : 0385349718 |
When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is a revolution under way—an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease. Deftly excavating and illuminating decades of investigation and analysis, he reveals what we know and don’t know about cancer, showing why a cure remains such a slippery concept. We follow him as he combs through the realms of epidemiology, clinical trials, laboratory experiments, and scientific hypotheses—rooted in every discipline from evolutionary biology to game theory and physics. Cogently extracting fact from a towering canon of myth and hype, he describes tumors that evolve like alien creatures inside the body, paleo-oncologists who uncover petrified tumors clinging to the skeletons of dinosaurs and ancient human ancestors, and the surprising reversals in science’s comprehension of the causes of cancer, with the foods we eat and environmental toxins playing a lesser role. Perhaps most fascinating of all is how cancer borrows natural processes involved in the healing of a wound or the unfolding of a human embryo and turns them, jujitsu-like, against the body. Throughout his pursuit, Johnson clarifies the human experience of cancer with elegiac grace, bearing witness to the punishing gauntlet of consultations, surgeries, targeted therapies, and other treatments. He finds compassion, solace, and community among a vast network of patients and professionals committed to the fight and wrestles to comprehend the cruel randomness cancer metes out in his own family. For anyone whose life has been affected by cancer and has found themselves asking why?, this book provides a new understanding. In good company with the works of Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Abraham Verghese, The Cancer Chronicles is endlessly surprising and as radiant in its prose as it is authoritative in its eye-opening science.
| Author | : Leslie J. Reagan |
| Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
| Total Pages | : 433 |
| Release | : 2022-02-22 |
| Genre | : Medical |
| ISBN | : 0520387422 |
The definitive history of abortion in the United States, with a new preface that equips readers for what’s to come. When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-read book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed—and how millions of women sought abortions regardless of the law. With this edition, Leslie J. Reagan provides a new preface that addresses the dangerous and ongoing threats to abortion access across the country, and the precarity of our current moment. While abortions have typically been portrayed as grim "back alley" operations, this deeply researched history confirms that many abortion providers—including physicians—practiced openly and safely, despite prohibitions by the state and the American Medical Association. Women could find cooperative and reliable practitioners; but prosecution, public humiliation, loss of privacy, and inferior medical care were a constant threat. Reagan's analysis of previously untapped sources, including inquest records and trial transcripts, shows the fragility of patient rights and raises provocative questions about the relationship between medicine and law. With the right to abortion increasingly under attack, this book remains the definitive history of abortion in the United States, offering vital lessons for every American concerned with health care, civil liberties, and personal and sexual freedom.
| Author | : Jessica Wapner |
| Publisher | : The Experiment, LLC |
| Total Pages | : 133 |
| Release | : 2020-10-06 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1615197354 |
We build border walls to keep danger out. But do we understand the danger posed by walls themselves? East Germans were the first to give the crisis a name: Mauerkrankheit, or “wall disease.” The afflicted—everyday citizens living on both sides of the Berlin wall—displayed some combination of depression, anxiety, excitability, suicidal ideation, and paranoia. The Berlin Wall is no more, but today there are at least seventy policed borders like it. What are they doing to our minds? Jessica Wapner investigates, following a trail of psychological harm around the world. In Brownsville, Texas, the hotly contested US-Mexico border wall instills more feelings of fear than of safety. And in eastern Europe, a Georgian grandfather pines for his homeland—cut off from his daughters, his baker, and his bank by the arbitrary path of a razor-wire fence built in 2013. Even in borderlands riven by conflict, the same walls that once offered relief become enduring reminders of trauma and helplessness. Our brains, Wapner writes, devote “border cells” to where we can and cannot go safely—so, a wall that goes up in our town also goes up in our minds. Weaving together interviews with those living up against walls and expert testimonies from geographers, scientists, psychologists, and other specialists, she explores the growing epidemic of wall disease—and illuminates how neither those “outside” nor “inside” are immune.
| Author | : Robert Bazell |
| Publisher | : Random House |
| Total Pages | : 241 |
| Release | : 2011-04-27 |
| Genre | : Health & Fitness |
| ISBN | : 0307764982 |
Two years after she underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy, Barbara Bradfield's aggressive breast cancer had recurred and spread to her lungs. The outlook was grim. Then she took part in Genentech's clinical trials for a new drug. Five years later she remains cancer-free. Her-2 is the biography of Herceptin, the drug that provoked dramatic responses in Barbara Bradfield and other women in the trials and that offers promise for hundreds of thousands of breast cancer patients. Unlike chemotherapy or radiation, Herceptin has no disabling side effects. It works by inactivating Her-2/neu--a protein that makes cancer cells grow especially quickly-- produced by a gene found in 25 to 30 percent of all breast tumors. Herceptin caused some patients' cancers to disappear completely; in others, it slowed the progression of the disease and gave the women months or years they wouldn't otherwise have had. Herceptin is the first treatment targeted at a gene defect that gives rise to cancer. It marks the beginning of a new era of treatment for all kinds of cancers. Robert Bazell presents a riveting account of how Herceptin was born. Her-2 is a story of dramatic discoveries and strong personalities, showing the combination of scientific investigation, money, politics, ego, corporate decisions, patient activism, and luck involved in moving this groundbreaking drug from the lab to a patient's bedside. Bazell's deft portraits introduce us to the remarkable people instrumental in Herceptin's history, including Dr. Dennis Slamon, the driven UCLA oncologist who played the primary role in developing the treatment; Lily Tartikoff, wife of television executive Brandon Tartikoff, who tapped into Hollywood money and glamour to help fund Slamon's research; and Marti Nelson, who inspired the activists who lobbied for a "compassionate use" program that would allow women outside the clinical trials to have access to the limited supplies of Herceptin prior to FDA approval of the drug. And throughout there are the stories of the heroic women with advanced breast cancer who volunteered for the trials, risking what time they had left on an unproven treatment. Meticulously researched, written with clarity and compassion, Her-2 is masterly reporting on cutting-edge science.
| Author | : George Carlo |
| Publisher | : Basic Books |
| Total Pages | : 320 |
| Release | : 2002-02-12 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 9780786709601 |
Essential reading for the 100 million Americans currently using wireless phones, this thoroughly researched and documented cautionary work stands alongside of such classics as Silent Spring and The Coming Plague. With news reports proliferating of the possible connection between brain tumors and cell phone use, Dr. George Carlo was hired by the cell phone industry in 1993 to study the safety of its product. In 1999 funds for Dr. Carlo's research were not renewed, and the industry sought to discredit him. Undeterred, Carlo now brings his case to the public with a powerful assessment of the dangers posed by the microwave radiation from cell phone antennas—disruption of the functioning of pacemakers, penetration of the developing skulls of children, compromise to the blood-brain barrier, and, most startlingly, genetic damage that is a known diagnostic marker for cancer—as well as a presentation of safeguards that consumers can implement right now to protect their health. ".…the authors raise serious questions about the integrity of the cell phone industry and the FDA."—San Francisco Chronicle "Extraordinarily informative...[a] captivating story…."—Publishers Weekly
| Author | : Bruce S. McEwen |
| Publisher | : Rockefeller Univ. Press |
| Total Pages | : 336 |
| Release | : 1994 |
| Genre | : Medical |
| ISBN | : 9780874700565 |
| Author | : Stefan Bröer |
| Publisher | : Xlibris Corporation |
| Total Pages | : 255 |
| Release | : 2022-11-20 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 1669832597 |
What energises humans to move and think? Whether we wake up groggy and say that we have no energy to do anything or whether we wake up refreshed and feel ready to tackle the day, scientists and non-scientists alike acknowledge that energy is essential for anything to happen. However, not everyone knows and digs deeper into what energy actually is. In the human body, energy can be followed by looking at one molecule. In “Life’s Energy” the reader is guided through our bodies molecular world to understand of how a single molecule, Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), can drive life. The book goes back in history to see how ATP was discovered. Then it follows ATP around the body and explains what it does, how it is maintained and explores its role in diseases such as diabetes and cancer. Along the way it introduces the scientists involved in ATP research, how their research activity was affected by the rise of the “Third Reich” and why many of them were awarded Nobel Prizes for their insights.
| Author | : Kelly K. Hunt |
| Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
| Total Pages | : 469 |
| Release | : 2007-10-26 |
| Genre | : Medical |
| ISBN | : 159745222X |
The three sections of this volume present currently available cancer gene therapy techniques. Part I describes the various aspects of gene delivery. In Part II, the contributors discuss strategies and targets for the treatment of cancer. Finally, in Part III, experts discuss the difficulties inherent in bringing gene therapy treatment for cancer to the clinic. This book will prove valuable as the volume of preclinical and clinical data continues to increase.
| Author | : James Tabery |
| Publisher | : Knopf |
| Total Pages | : 337 |
| Release | : 2023-08-15 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0525658211 |
A revelatory account of how power, politics, and greed have placed the unfulfilled promise of personalized medicine at the center of American medicine The United States is embarking on a medical revolution. Supporters of personalized, or precision, medicine—the tailoring of health care to our genomes—have promised to usher in a new era of miracle cures. Advocates of this gene-guided health-care practice foresee a future where skyrocketing costs can be curbed by customization and unjust disparities are vanquished by biomedical breakthroughs. Progress, however, has come slowly, and with a price too high for the average citizen. In Tyranny of the Gene, James Tabery exposes the origin story of personalized medicine—essentially a marketing idea dreamed up by pharmaceutical executives—and traces its path from the Human Genome Project to the present, revealing how politicians, influential federal scientists, biotech companies, and drug giants all rallied behind the genetic hype. The result is a medical revolution that privileges the few at the expense of health care that benefits us all. Now American health care, driven by the commercialization of biomedical research, is shifting focus away from the study of the social and environmental determinants of health, such as access to fresh and nutritious food, exposure to toxic chemicals, and stress caused by financial insecurity. Instead, it is increasingly investing in “miracle pills” for leukemia that would bankrupt most users, genetic studies of minoritized populations that ignore structural racism and walk dangerously close to eugenic conclusions, and oncology centers that advertise the perfect gene-drug match, igniting a patient’s hope, and often dashing it later.Tyranny of the Gene sounds a warning cry about the current trajectory of health care and charts a path to a more equitable alternative.
