THE DEATH OF CANCER

Never happier



The Death of Cancer, by Dr. Vincent DeVita

I reviewed, and presumably read, this book last year (http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2016/03/warts-and-all.html), but now I wonder if it truly WAS the same book.  This time through I encountered so many important passages, topics and zingers that I didn’t remember that at one point I checked to see if I was reading a second edition!  (I wasn’t).  I’m afraid the explanation is that my power of concentration has slipped a little in the 50 or so years since I left school.  Ya think?

Anyway, the bottom line is that you really should read this book if you possibly can.  If anybody exists who has more right to an opinion on these subjects than the author, he or she must be a hermit sitting on a sunny rock outside a cave high in the mountains, in constant communication with God!  I can’t do justice to the book without writing a very long review, which neither you nor I would enjoy, so here are some highlights:

The pace of drug development currently is such that most cancers can be rendered non-fatal by converting them into chronic diseases, or cured outright.

It almost always is a mistake to “give up” on a cancer patient, because that fast pace of drug development may spew out an effective remedy at any time.

The FDA is in great need of reorganization.  Too slow, too cautious, too bureaucratic, too like a mass of roots clogging a sewer line.  According to the author, Obamacare will make matters worse – but the Donald will fix that, won’t he?  Ha!

Two things that disappoint me about this book:

1)       No discussion of where the money for all this will come from.

2)      No discussion of ovarian cancer, at all.

But, anyway:  Thank you, Dr. DeVita, for a valuable book, and a lifetime well spent.