this is about an hour and a half. i have a very personal relationship to this bookstore. i was a student very close by here, an undergraduate from a foreign country. when i could get my spirits up, i would like to this bookstore and spend time here. there s something wonderful about things coming back. so thank you very much for having me here. and thank you for those really wonderful words of praise. i must say though, my favorite praise that it received for the book came this morning when i was reading through my e-mails. someone sent me a note from some blogger who says arthur cliff notes for the the emperor of all maladies ? [laughter] it s been my lifelong ambition to have a book to which there are cliffsnotes. [laughter] so if anyone is inspired to write cliffsnotes, please let you know. i would be delighted. i thought i would begin today rather than talking about the content of the book, i thought i would begin about talking about process because that s more inter
for me because it reminded me about what was essential and what was nonessential. and the essential piece of it was that much like a book, medicine is about storytelling. the dissent begins with the most shamanic at, if you take away all its paraphernalia, it begins with someone saying tell me your story. what happened? that is the first thing that happens when you meet it up your is that you begin to unpack the story. and if they make a claim in the book, doctors then tell a story back to you. and it s an ancient interchange, one of the most ancient interchange is we have is human beings. that itself, that process in itself begins the unpacking or unburdening long before you receive the first dose of whatever medicine you will or will not receive. it is the unburdening of the story that is the first. and if you forget that, it seems to be something very important will stop happening. and what s i come to that realization inspired by this comment, it began to become very clea
history of cancer. we brought him back for a second round. joining me is dr. sid mokerjee. and robert sandler, whose twin brother was treated in a cancer trial in 1947. did you know about your brother s history? i had no idea until recently. until the book came out. you dedicated the book to robert sandler. you told the story. why robert in particular? robert was the first child to be treated with chemo therapy by sidney farber in boston. he had a brief response to the drug, had a relapse and, unfortunately, died soon after. by adding more combinations of the very same kinds of drugs, eventually this disease that robert had, acute leukemia came
sidney farber was on to something. a kind of magic possession. the first chemo therapy drug. robert sandler was in the first group to receive it. here is his mother, more than 50 jeers later in a family video. every day to the hospital by discre streetcar, by bus. we didn t have a car. imagine the jubilation when it worked. within weeks, robert was back on his feet, back with the family. christmas 1948, still doing well. but it didn t last. and he had one month to go to be four when he died. robert died in the summer of 1949. nearly two full years after cancer struck. the scientific triumph that never did trump a family s pain. that s my bad memories of losing my son, after having him declared cured, because they used him as a guinea pig. i first heard this story from
thought he was mentally handicapped. he cured himself by talking to the jaguars. let s get started. you may not know this, cancer will strike down one in four americans and smart people will tell you that we re losing the war on cancer. instead today i want to talk about how far we ve come. even at the end of world war ii, doctors had very few weapons against cancer. you could cut it out, blast it with radiation, with terrible side effects, but there was no medicine. and one day in 1947, a little 2-year-old boy came through the doors at children s hospital in boston. robert sandler had leukemia. it had broken through his bones, his twin, elliott, watched the ambulance take him away. back then, the disease meant death, in a matter of weeks, maybe months. but at children s hospital, dr. sidney farber was on to something. a kind of magic possession. the first chemo therapy drug. robert sandler was in the first group to receive it. here is his mother, more than 50 jeers later i