THE CONSPIRACY TO END CANGER

摘要

No exalted individual, no victory celebration, no Marie Curie or Jonas Salk, who in 1955, after he created the first polio vaccine, was asked, So what's next? Cancer?- as if a doctor finished with one disease could simply shift his attention to another, like a chef turning from the soup to the entree. Cancer doesn't work that way. It's not just one disease; it's hundreds, potentially thousands. And not all cancers are caused by just one agent-a virus or bacterium that can be flushed and crushed. Cancer is an intricate and potentially lethal collaboration of genes gone awry, of growth inhibitors gone missing, of hormones and epigenomes changing and rogue cells breaking free. It works as one great armed force, attacking by the equivalent of air and land and sea and stealth, and we think we're going to take it out with what? A lab-coated sniper? "This disease is much more complex than we have been treating it," says MIT's Phillip Sharp. "And the complexity is stunning."