Okay, Sidd: Now get back to work. Please.

Linda and cousin Elsie, on a good Borrego flower year

Remember Siddhartha Mukherjee?  Of course you do; I have written about him many times, and you read all my stuff, of course.  Well, Dr.  Mukherjee is on the Columbia University faculty.   His research area is cancer; his hobby appears to be creative writing.  He has written several highly acclaimed books:  The Emperor of All Maladies, which I rated A+ #1 you-gotta-read-it

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-emperor-of-all-maladies.html

as well as the distinctly inferior but still worthwhile The Gene, an intimate history. 

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-gene-intimate-history.html

I gave Sidd’s second book a solid B for content an A for style - but an A+ as a sleep aide.

Mukherjee also has written a quite a few magazine essays, most  of which are useful.  One of my favorites deals with  epigenetics:

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2016/05/mukherjee-on-epigenetics.html

Well, my research team of Joanne and Dick Ingwall has alerted me to yet another Mukherjee effort, published by the NYTimes.  The title is The Search for Cancer Treatment Beyond Mutant-Hunting. 

Here it is:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/magazine/the-search-for-cancer-treatment-that-is-personal-and-useful.html

I can’t seem to extract much that is useful from this essay.  It seems to be telling us that there is more to targeted cancer therapy than simply matching the disease to the relevant set of mutations, then applying the appropriate drug.  Well, Gee, who would have thought of that?  I guess in the last page or so Mukherjee is hinting at what we should be doing, but after several attempts I have still to recognize anything resembling a concrete plan.  Maybe I’m just too stupid, but I don’t think so.  I think that Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee simply likes to write.

God damn it Sidd, get back into the lab and cure cancer!  Afterwards, you can write the Great American Literary Masterpiece.