Siddhartha Mukherjee quotes - page 2

I think you would have to be a nihilist to say that we are not making progress on cancer, just like you'd have to be hubristically optimistic to say that we have conquered cancer. (Siddhartha Mukherjee)

Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

One day, I had a patient who was going through chemotherapy who came to me and said, 'I'm going to go on with what I'm doing, but I need you to tell me what it is that I'm fighting.'

Siddhartha Mukherjee

There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population - we aren't dying of other things, so we're dying of cancer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Nearly every one of the genes that turns out to be a key player in cancer has a vital role in the normal physiology of an organism. The genes that enable our brains and blood cells to develop are implicated in cancer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

The idea that cancer genes are sitting inside each and every one of our chromosomes, just waiting to be corrupted or inactivated and thereby unleashing cancer, is, of course, one of the seminal ideas of oncology.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

I'm human, we all are - all doctors are - and grieving is a natural part of medicine. As a doctor, grieving is a natural part of medicine. If you deny that, again, you'd get into this trap of curing and victory. I think grief is very important.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

We know cancer is caused ultimately via a link between the environment and genes. There are genes inside cells that tell cells to grow and the same genes tell cells to stop growing. When you deregulate these genes, you unleash cancer. Now, what disrupts these genes? Mutations.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science research was staggering.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

What we do in the laboratory is we try to design drugs that will not just eradicate cancer cells but will eradicate their homes.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers. (Siddhartha Mukherjee)

Cancer is not one disease but many diseases.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

All cancers are alike but they are alike in a unique way.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer was not disorganized chromosomal chaos. It was organized chromosomal chaos.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary principles are very complicated and often its capacity to be constantly mystifying comes as a big challenge.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

One swallow is a coincidence, but two swallows make summer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Could your medicine be a cell, not a pill? Could your medicine be an organ that's created outside the body? Could your medicine be an environment? (Siddhartha Mukherjee)

There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this idea of a hidden swelling is seminal to cancer. But even in more contemporary writing it's called 'the big C'.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

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