ONE IN THREE by ADAM WISHART

BREAST CANCER INCIDENCE DROP

The sharp drop in breast cancer rates in the United States reported last week is astonishingly good news. It is the first major reduction in the incidence of a malignancy that strikes more than 200,000 American women every year — and kills some 40,000 annually.

This is extraordinary news. For the first time incidence in breast cancer is declining massively, by 7 per cent. It seems likely that is linked to the declining use of hormone replacement therapy. Which all goes to show that if we can understand the causes, then we can begin to tackle this disease.

Link: A big drop in breast cancer.

Picks of the Year

ONE IN THREE has been pleasingly picked in some of the pre-christmas roundups.

In the Observer.

Some words of praise for Adam Wishart's One in Three. Subtitled 'A son's journey into the history and science of cancer', the book interweaves two very different narratives: the history of cancer research and the story of how Wishart's father contracted and finally succumbed to the condition. The former sections are models of scientific clarity, the latter are powerfully written - and profoundly moving.

Link.

In the Sunday Times:

Although it enters a crowded field, Wishart’s account of his father’s death from cancer is moving, medically informed and exceptionally well written. Multiplying cancer cells are likened to “useless hotel bellhops passing on every bit of foyer gossip as a genuine message”. The aim, to dispel the “blind terror” that the c-word still evokes, is generously fulfilled, while he never shrinks from describing the irreparable loss of a parent’s death.

Link: Blowing their own trumpets .

And by David Lodge in the Guardian:

Adam Wishart's One in Three (Profile) interweaves a moving, but unsentimental, account of his father's last illness and death from cancer with a history of the disease and its treatment from classical to modern times. Informative, balanced, accessible, and absolutely riveting.

Link: Take a leaf out of their books .

Please do not try this at home

If ever anyone needs any reminder that we've come a long way in cancer medicine since the 19th century, just look at this strange patent. Its intention was to stop breast lumps, in the hope that preventing them growing. It just looks bonkers.

LINK

Another Breast Cancer Gene

Today the Guardian announces that

"Cancer specialists will announce today that they have discovered a gene which may hold the key to a treatment for up to 10% of all breast cancers. The development could - in time - lead to treatments that would make chemotherapy unnecessary."

I have very mixed feelings about the spate of these kind of stories. On the one hand this is clearly a great triumph for science. At last we are beginning to understand all of the piece of the cancer puzzle. Are ability to do so will definitely make it easier to design specific therapies in the future. Just our ability to unravel the complexity of cancer amazes me.

And yet these stories often come with a promise of an imminent therapeutic intervention. In the last few years, there have been all manner of these stories. Yet in fact the drugs have been much slower in arriving than they promise. Its not surprising, both Herceptin and Gleevec too about a decade from the identification of the gene to the discovery of the drug. But there is another point in all of this, and that is that stories like this seem to characterise cancer as the problem of a single gene. Now that is not true. And the real problem for researchers will be trying to identify and treat the clusters of genes that go to causing a single cancer. Its going to be complicated stuff, much more complicated than these kind of news stories make out.

Link: Scientists find genetic key to some breast cancers.