BOOK REVIEW: A Cure Within

Linda and Laura Hansen

It is a dreary day here in Bellingham; the first genuinely rainy day in over a month.  I should seize the occasion to get this over with.

“This” is a review of a new cancer book, A Cure Within: Scientists unleashing the immune system to kill cancer.  The author is Neil Canavan, who is described as “a freelance journalist specializing in science and medicine”.  He is currently “scientific adviser” to something called the Trout Group, which describes itself as “ the leading global investor relations and strategic advisory firm servicing the life sciences industry”  Whatever: Neil has an M.S. degree in molecular biology, which means he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, so I had better tread lightly.  However…..

I am approaching the end of Neil’s book, for the second time.  At first reading, I hated it.  In fact, I hated it so much that I undertook a second reading expressly to select evidence to damn it to perdition.  Then a funny thing happened; on a second go I began, grudgingly, to like it!  No way I tackle it a third time; I might find myself applying for membership in Neil’s fan club!

So, what’s good and what’s bad?  Well – I hate the guy’s style, for one thing.  He is capable of telling us that “Viruses are really, really small” at one point, then toss a phrase like “… validated target proteins with glial cell-derived neutrotrophic factor or tyrosine hydroxylase”… at you a few pages later.  Also, to make his book a bit more user friendly, I suppose, he broke it up into bite-sized sections, each with its own little title.  One such is, I kid you not – “Bite Me”.  Another is “Blessed are the Cheeseheads”.  Most are serious and even useful, but a few definitely are not..

Maybe the problem is that I read the wrong book.  The book I was looking for would have explained immunotherapy in a straightforward manner that even someone without an M.S. in molecular biology could assimilate; What Neil did – to enhance reader appeal? – was to tell the story through mini-biographies of selected scientists involved in the evolution of IO (immuno-oncology), twenty five in all. 

The life stories of some of these folks are interesting, but Neil struggles to make them even more so, to little effect..  For instance: he is capable of asking one august senior scientist  (which do you like better) the Beetles, the  Rolling Stones, or the Grateful Dead?  Now, if he’d asked Willie Nelson Johnny Cash, or Patsy Cline I might have forgiven him.

So, anyway, the saga of IO is traced in this book, but in a choppy, capriciously segmented way that I find disappointing.  There is some good stuff here, but you have to dig for it.  My advice: wait a few months, and then buy a like-new copy from Abe books, for $3.57, with free shipping.