| Cancer -- Treatment |
| Immunotherapy |
| Cancer -- History. |
| Cancer -- Therapy |
| Cancer therapy |
| Cancer treatment |
| Therapeutic immunology |
| Cancers |
| Carcinoma |
| Malignancy (Cancer) |
| Malignant tumors |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Wareham Free Library | 616.99 KIN 2019 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A fascinating history of our understanding and the treatment of cancer by one of the leading figures in the field--who is also a pioneer on the cusp of a breakthrough.
For the first time since a 5th century Greek physician gave the name "cancer" (karkinos, in Greek) to a deadly disease first described in Egyptian Papyri, the medical world is near a breakthrough that could allow even the most conservative doctors and pragmatic patients to use the other "c word" - cure - in the same sentence as cancer. A remarkable series of events has brought us to this point, thanks in large part to a new ability to more efficiently harness the extraordinary power of the human immune system.
The End of the Beginning is a remarkable history of cancer treatment and the evolution of our understanding of its dynamic interplay with the immune system. Through Michael Kinch's personal experience as a cancer researcher and the head of the oncology program at a leading biotechnology company, we witness the incredible accumulation of breakthrough science and its rapid translation into life-saving technologies that have begun to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of life for cancer patients.
In clear and accessible prose, Kinch details the remarkable history of people, science, technology and disease and presents thrilling next-generation technologies that hold the promise to eliminate cancer for some, and perhaps ultimately, for all.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kinch (Between Hope and Fear), a radiation oncology professor at Washington University School of Medicine, approaches cancer philosophically in this well-grounded, if not groundbreaking, history of the search for a cure. Asking what is meant by the "deceiving" word "cancer," he provides a nuanced answer that debunks misconceptions, such as cancer being a disease of accelerated cell growth, and painstakingly describes the immunization-based targeting of the disease. He sometimes indulges in elaborate asides, such as about how John D. Rockefeller's family background motivated his founding the Rockefeller Institute, but generally remains focused, discussing many unusual cases-for example, actor Alec Guinness and his wife, Merula Silvia Salaman, dying in the same year of a rare carcinoma. Kinch also describes and explains the pioneering research linking cancer and viruses conducted worldwide during the last century. His own experiences in the 1980s bio-technology boom only come into play toward the end, where he describes the "ugly imbroglio of finger-pointing and greed" that blocked cutting-edge research. Readers may wish Kinch had given more time to this story but they will still gain from his thoughtful book an improved understanding of the "promises and perils" involved in finding a cure for cancer. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A cancer researcher chronicles the history of the disease and the prospects in the search for a cure.A cure for cancer has been just around the corner for nearly a century but is drawing near, according to this richly detailed, expert description of the history of cancer, its treatment, and research that is now producing quantum-leap breakthrough therapy. Kinch (Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity, 2018), oncology researcher and professor at Washington University, begins before 1900 with the brilliant but mostly obscure researchers who gradually revealed the nature of cancer. Investigations of bacteria, a 19th-century obsession, were a dead end, but studies after 1900 found that tiny, nearly invisible particles, later revealed as viruses, were one cause. Knowledge of immunity also grew, but few associated this with cancer until after World War II, when scientists discovered that antibodies and white blood cells normally destroy tissues that become malignant but sometimes fail. Since the discovery of monoclonal antibodies and cell-based immunity in the 1970s and '80s, pharmaceutical companies have been creating treatments that program the patient's own immune system to attack cancer cells alone. This is a vast improvement over traditional chemotherapy, which poisons normal cells almost as badly as malignant ones. There have also been miracle cures in which massive tumors melt away, although they remain a minority. More commonly, the cancer shrinks for a time and then resumes growing. The best of today's cutting-edge therapies fail half the time, and serious toxicities are also turning up. Finally, these "biologicals" consist of complex molecules, hundreds of times larger than the old ones. Requiring enormous time and labor, they are wildly expensiveapproaching $1 million per course.As the title suggests, scientists have reached only the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end of cancer is on the horizon, and Kinch's intensely researched, definitely not dumbed down and lucid account makes this superbly clear. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The brawn of the body's immune system is being enlisted in contemporary cancer treatments with increasing frequency. Recent advances in the field of immuno-oncology and the discoveries that gave rise to its naissance are highlighted here. Kinch surveys the history, researchers, and technology of immune-based therapy for cancer, and acknowledges the contributions to medical science made by cancer patients enrolled in clinical trials. These novel treatments involve potential risks and toxicities. Readers are deluged with information about monoclonal antibodies and all types of T-cell lymphocytes. His discussion of molecular biology is sometimes stuffy and often makes for bumpy reading. But Kinch is at his best when reporting on the business of cancer-biotechnology start-ups, the pharmaceutical industry, funding, and patents. He also has a knack for injecting attention-grabbing tidbits into the treatise, such as the ""zombification"" of certain cells, how rabbits are transformed into jackelopes by infection with a papillomavirus, and a Danish doctor's death of cutaneous anthrax from a contaminated shaving brush. This is intriguing, important subject matter but the presentation can be overwhelming.--Tony Miksanek Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
The measles outbreak prompts a look at the tumultuous history of vaccination. WHO WOULD EVER have predicted that this winter's grim medical headlines would address not the usual coldweather pestilence - influenza - but pedestrian, forgettable old measles? Just about everybody, that's who. Experts have been tracking the worldwide resurgence of measles for decades now, and it was only a matter of time before the scattershot outbreaks of years past turned into this year's newsworthy explosions. Readers curious about this infection rising phoenixlike from its own ashes will find both less and more in the library than they may want. Aside from a few textbooks and pamphlets, 1 couldn't find a whole book devoted to measles - not since the 10 th century A.D., that is, when the Persian physician Al-Razi wrote "The Smallpox and Measles" to differentiate the two. Still, quite a few recent books deliver the basics, including information on childhood infections and their medical dangers, the various ways we have learned to thwart those dangers and the ways in which those efforts have in turn been thwarted. Readers intrigued enough by vaccination to want more details on the workings of the human immune system and its potential for both harm and good will find new books discussing just that topic. For a detailed review of diseases, vaccines and the objections the anti-vaccine lobbyists have brought to the table, books by the prolific Paul Offit are a good place to start. Offit is a pediatrician and infectious disease expert in Philadelphia whose longtime, eloquent advocacy of vaccination has made him a permanent target of anti-vaccine lobbyists - his book signings have sometimes been canceled because of credible death threats. Offit's "Deadly Choices" (2010) outlines the often-forgotten complications of childhood infections and rebuts the various objections of the anti-vaxxers point by point. "Autism's False Prophets" (2008) concentrates on the thoroughly debunked assertion that the neurological condition autism results from childhood vaccines. But it is "Bad Faith" (2015), Offit's analysis of the tension between religious fundamentalism and vaccination, that speaks most directly to this year's headlines with a short, unforgettable section on measles. During the winter of 1990-91, more than 1,400 adults and children in Philadelphia developed measles, and nine children, all unvaccinated, died. Offit's dispassionate, methodical summary of the religious and political theories that enabled that giant outbreak simmers with anger. Living through that epidemic, he has since written, "was like being in a war zone." If expert opinion from a war zone is not an appealing perspective on the subject, readers will find similar territory covered in an utterly different voice by Seth Mnookin in his excellent "The Panic Virus" (2011). A journalist with no skin in the vaccine game - other than the fact that he was a new father when he wrote the book - Mnookin just wanted to explore the minefield for himself. As he tentatively lays out vaccine pros and cons he becomes convinced of the fallacies and dangers in the anti-vaccine movement's rhetoric. His reflections on the actress Jenny McCarthy, whose transformation into anti-vaccine advocate revived a fading Hollywood career, make for a fun, snarky read, but the enduring importance of Mnookin's book lies in its methodical science-based rebuttals of wild rhetoric. If histrionic behavior and snark appeal to you, you can get quite a dose of both from the stories of some of the vaccine scientists themselves. Offit's "Vaccinated" (2007) profiles one of the 20th century's foremost vaccinologists, Merck's powerful and spectacularly foul-mouthed Maurice Hilleman, and sketches out the climate of fierce scientific competition and politics in which he thrived. The science journalist Meredith Wadman took a deep dive into similar material and created a real jewel of science history. Wadman's "The Vaccine Race" (2017) brims with suspense and now-forgotten catastrophe and intrigue, all beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, when, as she writes, the chase for new vaccines "was as hot as today's quest to unravel the profound mysteries of the human genome." The first vaccinologists were accustomed to working in happy solitude, policed by conscience alone - or not, as the case may be (some were really wildly unprincipled). Soon enough, though, the scientists were joined in their projects by academics and salesmen, then by corporate executives, then by congressmen and lawyers. All were forced to navigate the terrible early vaccine disasters, when contaminated products transmitted disease rather than protection, and all struggled with the need to reconcile centuries-old public health tools, like quarantine, with new ones like mandatory vaccination and informed consent. Wadman's smooth prose calmly spins a surpassingly complicated story into a real tour de force. Vaccination was only the first organized effort to harness the immune system for medical purposes. In the last two decades many other techniques have been devised, foremost among them the engineered proteins called monoclonal antibodies. These are the pricey drugs with unpronounceable names ending in "-mab" now being hawked incessantly on television for diseases from eczema to cancer. The story of the science behind these drugs and other sophisticated immunologic tools is just beginning to be written. In his new book, "The End of the Beginning" (Pegasus, $27.95), the immunologist Michael Kinch builds on a narrative he began last year in "Between Hope and Fear." That book profiles the immune system and the origins of modern vaccine science, draping it all with digressions into biography, philosophy and history. Kinch now changes focus slightly to review cancer biology and the promise of immune-mediated treatments. A professor at Washington University in St. Louis, he spent some of his early career at a biotechnical company and can speak with authority about the mixed promise of monoclonal antibodies for cancer treatment - some tumors vanish with these agents while others are utterly untouched, and none of the drugs is without side effects. Kinch's narrative is as loose and lavishly ornamented as ever, while his material is, if anything, even more scientifically complex. Some readers may enjoy the bumpy, glittery, distraction-filled ride. Others, presumably those of us with dull linear minds, will wish he would just settle down, even for a single chapter, and say what he has to say in a dull, straightforward way. Matt Richtel wanders different paths in the same territory with "An Elegant Defense" (Morrow/HarperCollins, $28.99), also published this spring. Areporter for The New York Times, Richtel became interested in immunology after a childhood friend developed Hodgkin's lymphoma in his early 40s. Hodgkin's is one of the more curable cancers of adulthood, but Jason Greenstein was in the unlucky minority of patients who have terrible, prolonged downhill courses. Richtel told portions of Jason's story in a Science Times series on the promise and perils of immunologic therapy: With a last-ditch experimental monoclonal antibody treatment, Jason's huge, disfiguring tumors melted away like warming ice cubes - a visible miracle, if sadly short-lived. Jason died in 2016. Richtel's deep affection for his irrepressible friend animates much of his book, and his stories of three other individuals whose illness or wellness can be ascribed to their unique immunologic makeup are interesting enough, if less affecting. But when Richtel attempts to explain the basic science underlying autoimmune disease and immunologic treatment, he is palpably out of his depth. Dozens of different immune cells and chemicals keep us healthy and can also make us grievously sick; their habits and functions are often opaque and the nomenclature is beyond confusing. Even a professional narrator like Richtel, forced to operate without tables and figures, is bound to get all tangled up in his prose and generate a few real bloopers. That's why some wise educator long ago created textbooks.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. ix |
| 1 A Growing Concern | p. 1 |
| 2 Surveillance State | p. 31 |
| 3 That Which Doesn't Kill You ... | p. 55 |
| 4 Deadly Sins | p. 86 |
| 5 An Old Story | p. 122 |
| 6 Smart Bombs and Payloads | p. 146 |
| 7 Designer Drugs | p. 176 |
| 8 Checkmate! | p. 204 |
| 9 The End of the Beginning | p. 234 |
| Epilogue | p. 259 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 263 |
| Endnotes | p. 265 |
| Index | p. 285 |