El Emperador de Todos Los Males / The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

En 2010, siete millones de personas murieron de cancer en todo el mundo. Con esta fria estadistica Siddhartha Mukherjee, medico e investigador oncologico, arranca su amplia y absorbente biografia de una de las enfermedades mas extendidas de nuestro tiempo.
El emperador de todos los males es una c [...]
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En 2010, siete millones de personas murieron de cancer en todo el mundo. Con esta fria estadistica Siddhartha Mukherjee, medico e investigador oncologico, arranca su amplia y absorbente biografia de una de las enfermedades mas extendidas de nuestro tiempo.
El emperador de todos los males es una cronica completa del cancer desde sus origenes hasta los modernos tratamientos (quimioterapia de diversos tipos, radioterapia y cirugia, ademas de la prevencion) que han surgido gracias a un siglo de investigacion, ensayos y pequenos avances trascendentales en muchos lugares distintos.
Este libro es un repaso a la ciencia del cancer y a la historia de los tratamientos que le han hecho frente, pero tambien es una reflexion sobre la enfermedad, la etica medica y las complejas y entrelazadas vidas de los oncologos y sus pacientes. La empatia que muestra Mukherjee hacia los enfermos de cancer y sus familias, asi como hacia los medicos que muy a menudo tan pocas esperanzas les pueden ofrecer, hacen de este libro una historia llena de humanidad de una enfermedad compleja e inasible.
Resenas:
Esta obra deberia valer a Mukherjee un merecido lugar en el panteon de los grandes divulgadores de nuestra era, junto a Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould y Stephen Hawking.
The Boston Globe
Una magistral historia de la investigacion sobre el cancer.
Publishers Weekly
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and now a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer--from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.
Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist's precision, a historian's perspective, and a biographer's passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with--and perished from--for more than five thousand years.
The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer." The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.
From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave may have cut off her diseased breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee's own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive--and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.
Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.