Readers of this blog are familiar with my interest in precancers. Precancer: The Beginning and the End of Cancer, was just published (August 11, 2009) by Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Inc., and is now available at Amazon. It was written with the help of Dr. G. William Moore. Here's the publisher's blurb:
"Nearly every type of cancer passes through a precancer phase, during which it cannot metastasize or invade other tissues. While medicine is not always successful in treating or curing advanced stages of cancers, recent advances in our understanding of carcinogenesis have helped us to develop strategies to prevent, diagnose, and treat many cancers at the precancer stage. Research in this field is escalating rapidly as the evidence increasingly shows that the number of annual cancer deaths could be drastically reduced through the effective treatment and cure of precancer lesions. This book begins by explaining why it has been so difficult to cure cancers, followed by a review of precancer biology, with descriptions of the most common precancer lesions. The final chapters provide practical socio-political and medical goals for precancer treatment, including discussions of the economics and politics of treating precancers."
I've been interested in the precancers for over thirty-six years, and I think it's a shame that the precancers have not gotten more attention from cancer researchers and from the public. My impression is that many cancer researchers fail to distinguish between "precancers" and "early cancers". Precancers are very different from early cancers. One of the most important properties of precancers is their tendency to regress [spontaneously, or with simple treatments]. The book clarifies the biological properties that distinguish precancers from other early [and late] cancers, and describes how we can stop cancers from developing by treating precancers.
More on precancers in next post.
Jules Berman
related words: precancers, preneoplastic lesions, preneoplasia, ien, intra-epithelial neoplasia, intraepithelial neoplasia, intra-epithelial neoplasm, intraepithelial neoplasm, in situ carcinoma, carcinoma in situ, cis, dcis, din, pin, panin, cin, dysplasia, adenoma, preneoplastic, pre-cancer, pre-cancerous, precancerous
Science is not a collection of facts. Science is what facts teach us; what we can learn about our universe, and ourselves, by deductive thinking. From observations of the night sky, made without the aid of telescopes, we can deduce that the universe is expanding, that the universe is not infinitely old, and why black holes exist. Without resorting to experimentation or mathematical analysis, we can deduce that gravity is a curvature in space-time, that the particles that compose light have no mass, that there is a theoretical limit to the number of different elements in the universe, and that the earth is billions of years old. Likewise, simple observations on animals tell us much about the migration of continents, the evolutionary relationships among classes of animals, why the nuclei of cells contain our genetic material, why certain animals are long-lived, why the gestation period of humans is 9 months, and why some diseases are rare and other diseases are common. In “Armchair Science”, the reader is confronted with 129 scientific mysteries, in cosmology, particle physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. Beginning with simple observations, step-by-step analyses guide the reader toward solutions that are sometimes startling, and always entertaining. “Armchair Science” is written for general readers who are curious about science, and who want to sharpen their deductive skills.
