Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong professor of medicine and the director of the MDS Center at Columbia University. In addition to publishing widely in basic and clinical cancer research, Raza is also the coeditor of the highly acclaimed website 3QuarksDaily.com. She lives in New York City.
"An elegantly conceived, powerfully written, and far-reaching
book that will change the conversation around cancer for decades to
come."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All
Maladies
Amazon's Best Science Book of 2019One of Smithsonian's Top 10 Books
of 2019The New York Times, Books to Watch For in October
2019Amazon, Top 100 Books of 2019LitHub, Most Anticipated Books
of 2019BookRiot, Must-Read Books on CancerStarred Review from
Publishers' WeeklyStarred Review from Kirkus
"An incisive critique-cum-memoir"--Nature
"Raza asks hard questions ... and she hopes to jolt people into
looking for a new paradigm in the so-called war on
cancer."--Henry Marsh, The New York Times Book Review
One of the New York Times' Eighteen New Books to Watch
For in October--Joumana Khatib
"An affecting, fascinating, timely, and uncompromisingly honest
look at where we stand in treating the most fearsome disease in
most people's worry list."--Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of
Psychology at Harvard University and author of Enlightenment Now:
The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
"Raza, a Columbia University professor of medicine and practicing
oncologist, offers a passionate account of how humans grapple with
the scourge of cancer.... Showing that compassion is just as
important for cancer patients as the drugs administered to them,
Raza's deeply personal work brings understanding and empathy to the
fore in a way that a purely scientific explication never
could."--Publishers Weekly
"With elegant literary references and a compassion that deeply
personalizes her interactions with patients and families, [Raza]
engages readers in a commitment to finding a better way.
Intelligence, empathy, and optimism inform the argument for new
research on cancer that could obviate the suffering prevalent
today."--Kirkus
"With command and clarity, Azra Raza indicts the cancer industry
with such force that it begs the question: Are we really winning
the cancer war? The First Cell is an intricately woven, often
lyrical, tapestry of anecdote and authority that returns the
suffering patient to the foreground of medical innovation. Raza
expertly illustrates the complex choreography of cancer's nefarious
dance, and her fascinating proposal will surely thrust cancer
therapy from the 20th to the 21st century."--Tina Brown, journalist
and author of The Diana Chronicles
"With wisdom distilled from more than three decades of clinical
practice, the sensibilities of a poet, and a deep compassion for
her fellow humans, Dr. Azra Raza provides a compelling argument
that a key way forward in improving patient outcomes is early
diagnosis and treatment, before cancer has become much too complex
for any therapy to overcome."--David Steensma, Attending Physician
at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Associate Professor at
Harvard Medical School
"Unraveling myth and metaphor surrounding the disease with
unrelenting acuity and sharing the pathos of lives have been
slashed of years and months and shorn of hope and promise by
cancer, Dr. Raza reveals a world that has of yet been inaccessible
to those who mourn humanity's lack of progress against the disease
while being simultaneously baffled by it. Here is a masterful
rendition of how an emphasis on curing cancer, instead of working
to detect its first venomous breath, has exacted a terrible price
in human lives, including that of her very own husband, Harvey. The
First Cell is an intertwining of literature and life, science and
cutting edge cancer research, that demands a radical transformation
in the way we humans understand the most tragic killer of our time.
Through her poignant story-telling and the strength of a scientific
vision built on decades of hard-wrought lessons gleaned from her
work as a clinician and research scholar, Dr. Raza presents an
arresting account that challenges our core understanding of cancer
and cure."
--Rafia Zakaria, journalist and author of The Upstairs Wife and
Veil
"A beautifully written book from a leading cancer expert who is
also a caring, committed clinician."--Peter D. Kramer, author of
Listening to Prozac and Ordinarily Well
"Azra Raza is famed as a titan in the field of oncology. Perhaps
less well-known is that she is a sensitive and passionate writer as
well. In The First Cell she combines the scientific and the human,
medicine and the arts, to give us a unique view into something that
touches all of our lives -- offering us reasons for hope, and
reasons also for sorrow."--Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant
Fundamentalist and Exit West
"We are accustomed to a narrative of war in books by cancer
researchers. The doctors are generals on the barricades alongside
their soldier patients. Progress is slow, but the battle is
gradually being won. This book tells another story. The drugs that
are declared successes offer only a few weeks of painful extension
of life. The best clinicians are usually thrown back on the
primitive combination of cut, poison, and burn that as students,
they thought they would look back on as an embarrassment. Bespoke
genetic treatments have significant limitations. Azra Raza breaks
out of the official story to tell a new one. She's not fighting a
war. She's negotiating with a resilient and dynamic enemy. She
wants to change the terms of engagement. No more fighting at the
endgame, but hunting down the first deviant cells. This book is a
passion project, a personal story, a scientific proposal, and quite
simply one of the most compelling books you'll read. It breaks out
of the standard narrative. It invents a whole new one. It works. By
the end you'll want to sign on to her revolution."--Sherry Turkle,
author of Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation
"When the history of cancer is eventually written, Azra Raza's book
will be one of the touchstones that illuminated the path to
victory."
--Amanda Foreman, author of The Duchess
"The First Cell is the rare book that brings both a
personal and scientific experience of cancer together. It questions
the profiteering that floods our environment with carcinogens in
the first place, and also those that profit from treating it. Azra
Raza puts our focus where it should be: on prevention and early
detection."
--Gloria Steinem
"An elegantly conceived, powerfully written, and far-reaching book
that will change the conversation around cancer for decades to
come."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All
Maladies
"As a cancer survivor, I can testify that Azra Raza's call to
action for more research on early detection is vitally important.
In a world driven by profit, this book is by a doctor who thinks
about the patient first."--Ruchira Gupta, journalist and
activist
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