Dr. Brawley: How we do harm

SpecialK

This subcategory sounds like the place:

http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/26

violet_1

Special K



Yeah...probably the best..

planetbananas

Not sure.... Mods, any thoughts?

violet_1

YAY! The Cancer Chronicles (2013) and The Emporer of All Maladies books just came from Amazon today. ..:)



Already started Cancer Chronicles--fabulous UP-TO-DATE info. Tons of notes for EVERY Chapter at end of book siting resources/websites/articles etc. for further study.

The author is a serious Science writer...and discusses MANY myths that are STILL being perpetuated by the Cancer world...

I'll keep you posted! This is a Must Read...and one of the FEW 2013 BOOKS out on cancer...extremely well documented, Ladies.

WOOT!

Miss Violet

Violet

voraciousreader

Just finished reading The Cancer Chronicles. Received it from my local library yesterday. While I found the book intensely readable, it was quite deep and I often had to reread certain sentences. It requires a great deal of prior knowledge to understand the complexities that cancer researchers face. Reading the book exhausted me. Like Dr. Offit's book, Do You Believe in Magic, it emphasizes how fluid research is and how difficult it is to pinpoint treatments when we truly know little about how cancer works. Like Offit, Johnson is skeptical about how to collect data and more importantly critical of food and nutrient studies. Could subjects actually remember what they ate twenty years before they developed cancer? What they are in agreement about is that good data takes generations to accrue and longer to decipher. What seems popular one decade loses favor the next as more knowledge is learned. Sobering is the lack of evidence for "environmental" causes. I put the word environmental in quotation marks because researchers definition of environmental is very different from laymen's terms. One thing that I found very interesting was that the Cherynobol disaster was NOT as big of a disaster as predicted. While unhabited by human beings, it is full of wildlife and many survivors of the disaster continue to be cancer free.



So while I found the book interesting to read, it hasn't taught me much nor changed my opinion about cancer treatment and research. I have always been very cautious when reading studies, not getting too excited about what I the patient should or shouldn't be doing. My feeling about diet and exercise has not changed. I have always exercised and ate healthy and yet still got cancer, not unlike Johnson's wife. I have an obese, older sister who is pre-diabetic and has controlled hypertension and is in treatment for high cholesterol , yet thankfully, never has had a cancer diagnosis. So I accept that cancer is a very complicated disease. But I knew that before reading the book. So for me...reading the book was pretty much same old, different day. I even knew before reading the book that junk DNA wasn't considered junk anymore. Actually, when researchers first called junk DNA "junk" I had thought it was pretty arrogant of them to use the word! I didn't think anything in the body, which we know is as elegant as the universe should be called "junk." Johnson eludes to this point when he refers to physics and astronomy where there is darkness but filled with all kinds of things that are still waiting to be discovered. The book drives home the point of how little we know about cancer and what needs to be discovered, but I already knew that before reading the book.

violet_1

Vor,



I read through the endnotes & gleaned a bit of what he was saying about the contoversy/question concerning diet exercise & the other topics you mentioned. I'm curious to read the book...the Environmental issues also...

I'm SURE I'll have some ?'s for ya when I'm finished. But, I've got 4 books going at one time right now...might take me a bit...;)

Did you read/like The Emporer?

Violet

voraciousreader

Violet... Although it is a terrific book and has been widely read and mentioned by other sisters here as well as a number of personal friends, I haven't read The Emperor of All Maladies.



For sure, these types of books are great for those who are newbies to cancer world. Their authors are terrific investigative medical writers and do a brilliant job of conveying their stories. Ken Burns is making a PBS documentary based on The Emperor which is scheduled to be broadcasted in 2015.



Getting back to Dr. Brawley, you can find the lecture he gave to medical writers in 2012 on YouTube. As you can probably imagine, they were a very tough crowd to please and he received a standing ovation from them. Dr. Brawley, IMHO stands among the finest individuals to bridge the divide between researchers, clinicians, politicians, health insurance companies and of course, patients.



Another book that I always recommend and truly changed my perspective of medicine was written by Eric Topol, MD. His book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine convinced me that we are now in the middle of an exciting health care revolution.





And finally, the other thing that I learned about cancer isn't found in a book... I know.. That's surprising for VR...I learned something very profound from researchers from Sloan Kettering that welcomed me to inside their lab. Sloan recently invested in a rare breast cancer disease lab. The idea behind the investment was to support rare breast cancers which they believe might be easier to understand than your garden variety types of breast cancers which they believe have way more mutations. Unlocking the mechanisms of rarer types they believe might help them to discover more about the garden types rather than the other way around. I thought this was an interesting concept because I know from my own experiences with the DH's rare genetic metabolic muscular dystrophy, researchers have learned more about treating "normal" people from studying the rare muscle diseases. In fact, when I read articles about athlete training, many of their training protocols come from the research coming from those same individuals that devote themselves to understanding rare muscle disease. So I recognize the significance and importance of Sloan Kettering's devotion to understanding rare breast cancers as a way to discovering how more complex garden variety breast cancers occur.

violet_1

Thanks Vor...as usual...;)



I'll look up the videos and add Dr. Topol to my Amazon cart.

Violet

voraciousreader

Dr. Topol is on YouTube too!

violet_1

Vor,

Weeeeeee! Post some links...;)

Pretty Please...ya know, with all of your free time..Hee!...:)



Back to editing for ME....PFFFFTTT.



VIOLET

Beesie

I'm about half way through The Emperor of All Maladies. Given everything that's been going on recently with regard to chemical weapons, I found the part about mustard gas to be really interesting. 

For those who have yet to read it, I won't say anymore.

MelissaDallas

I'm about 2/3 through it myself and am enjoying it immensely.



Just finished Dr. Brawley's book and it made me very, very glad that my 78 year old Dad's urologist has finally taken him out of the PSA/biopsy cycle. He's just told him that as long as he thinks he can pee okay he is going to leave his prostate alone.

violet_1

Melissa,

I'm almost finished w Brawley's book...it's really good. Should be required reading for cancer patients in general. But it's also informative for the general public.

I learned a lot about cancer politics, also...;) Can't wait to start the other books...



Violet