The Cancer Chronicles, by George Wilson

Wilson's journalistic-style narrative is loaded with a potpourri of cancer related stuff mostly geared to a non-medical professional audience. Nevertheless, I found many interesting facts and ideas sprinkled throughout. For example, Wilson delves, albeit briefly, into the Love Canal disaster in New York state in the 1970's and cites research that found only modest increase in genetic mutations in offspring of people living in the area and actually a decrease in overall cancer prevalence. And who knew that dinosaurs got tumors? I suppose it's logical that they did. One of the strengths of the book is that it is heavily referenced. Cancer, to me, is a byproduct of existence. I've always felt that it wasn't a disease in the same way that a bacterial infection is. Or an autoimmune condition like rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's. Cancer is uncontrolled cell proliferation. When the out of control cells migrate and take over other tissue (e.g. breast carcinoma cells traveling to bone), it is called metastatic cancer. After some time the uncontrolled growth takes over the other organs to such an extent that they no longer function properly and the organism dies. Cells need to divide in order for an organism to live. But they cannot divide and just keep dividing willy nilly. They would take over the body, right? Cells have a control mechanism which regulates when and how often they divide. Some genes encode proteins that are part of the machinery of cell division (so-called "oncogenes") and other genes encode proteins that regulate the process by slowing/stopping it (so-called "tumor suppressor genes"). When any of these myriad genes get mutated and don't work properly, the cell is at risk of losing control and becoming cancerous or immortal; the balance is disrupted. How do mutations happen? Sometimes just randomly - every time the cell divides it must duplicate its DNA. The machinery is not perfect and mistakes happen. This is one way mutations develop. Another way is through exposure to something which mutates the DNA - chemicals, viruses, radiation such as x-rays, radon, the sun, cell phone towers - nope, just kidding (there's no real evidence that low frequency electomagnetic radiation in power lines, cell phones, or other appliances is mutagenic.  A certain basic amount of energy is needed to ionize molecules or break DNA bonds and for the average person walking the streets the background electromagnetic radiation is insufficient to generate this level of energy. Please don't get too agitated. Don't forget that you can increase the amount of electromagnetic radiation either by increasing the number of devices or increasing the amplitude of one device, but the energy level will still be insufficient to ionize molecules or damage DNA. Energy is proportional to frequency and inversely proportional to wavelength; amount has nothing to do with it. Check out a physics book if you want to learn more. Or see this nice summary, especially parts 2 and 3, http://large.stanford.edu/publications/crime/references/moulder/moulder.pdf. By the way, Einstein's Nobel prize was on the photoelectric effect which harnessed this relationship). The longer you live, generally speaking the more often your cells have divided. And, since mutations occur when the DNA is replicated during cell division, it stands to reason that the longer you are alive, the greater the chance that you will develop cancer. And it's true! Cancer, for the most part, is a disease of older people (check out SEER data for verification - you have to dig into the website a bit but you'll find age charts like this one for bladder cancer http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/urinb.html). You might argue that it keeps us from living too long for purposeful advantage of the species. If we (as a species) lived too long, it would be a disincentive to reproduce (which also introduces mutations because of rapid cell division both during genesis of germ cells - sperm and ova - and during fetal development). Reduction in reproduction slows the evolution of a species. Take a look at bacterial colonies which reproduce and mutate rapidly. They develop resistance to drugs quite quickly both in vitro and in vivo.  When was the last time you saw a subset of humans develop mutations that conferred an equally powerful selection advantage? The development of larger craniums to accommodate larger brain sizes was due to a series of mutations that conferred a survival advantage. But that happened over millions of years. It can be fairly argued that without cancer or other things like infections, tigers, wars, or the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," you wouldn't be here reading this. I would have liked Wilson to dive more into these types of discussions. Instead, he whips through a tour of the cancer industry, epidemiology, and basic science research approaches to killing cancer cells. His own life serves as the gravitational force for the narrative - his wife was diagnosed with a high grade endometrial carcinoma and his brother developed head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Their stories are woven into the text. A good but not great tour of cancer. If you are interested in the subject and not a physician or cancer researcher, you will find it extremely informative. If you are of the industry, it's still a quick and, at times, interesting read.