Theories of Cancer

Check out this thought-provoking piece in the Times of London Literary Supplement yesterday by bladder cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, reviewing two new books on the intricacies of the scientific, medical and public policy debates about (or rather, the struggles over) how to think about the origins of cancer [links added].

One advantage of being a long-time cancer survivor – besides the obvious – is that it provides a front-row seat in the auditorium of ideas about the disease’s causation. Theories go in and out of fashion over the years, paradigms shift this way and that, and the patient is viewed differently by the medical community depending on which idea is currently on top.
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Two new books expose and explicate the ongoing social contest that is at the heart of our shifting understanding about cancer. They are both important and deserve to be read together. Devra Davis’s book [The Secret History of the War on Cancer] examines the historical forces at work when doubt is cast on the environmental evidence. Phil Brown’s book [Toxic Exposures] explores the opposing social movements that are struggling to rescue this evidence and to bring about public health policy change based on it.