It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
If you take 100 breast-cancer samples, 100 types of cancer have 100 different hallmarks of mutated genes. You could be nihilistic and say, 'Oh, God, we'll never be able to tackle this!' But there are deep, systematic, organizational principles at work in all that diversity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the complexity of cancer and the potential for understanding its diversity through systematic principles.
Siddhartha Mukherjee emphasizes the diverse nature of cancer, where each sample exhibits unique mutations. Instead of becoming hopeless in the face of such complexity, he suggests that recognizing underlying organizational principles can guide us in tackling the disease more effectively.
Themes
CancerMutationsSystemsDiversityHope
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference on cancer research, this quote can inspire researchers and scientists to focus on finding systematic solutions.
More from Siddhartha Mukherjee
All quotes →We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet.
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One day, I had a patient who was going through chemotherapy who came to me and said, 'I'm going to go on with what I'm doing, but I need you to tell me what it is that I'm fighting.'
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Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer.
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It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.
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It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
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