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 MukherjeeRead
If you take 100 breast-cancer samples, 100 types of cancer have 100 different hallmarks of mutated genes. You could be nihilistic and say, 'Oh, God, we'll never be able to tackle this!' But there are deep, systematic, organizational principles at work in all that diversity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the complexity of cancer and the potential for understanding its diversity through systematic principles.
Siddhartha Mukherjee emphasizes the diverse nature of cancer, where each sample exhibits unique mutations. Instead of becoming hopeless in the face of such complexity, he suggests that recognizing underlying organizational principles can guide us in tackling the disease more effectively.
Themes
CancerMutationsSystemsDiversityHope
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference on cancer research, this quote can inspire researchers and scientists to focus on finding systematic solutions.
More from Siddhartha Mukherjee
All quotes →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 MukherjeeRead
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 MukherjeeRead
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 MukherjeeRead
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 MukherjeeRead
It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
Siddhartha MukherjeeRead
Similar quotes
Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.
Richard DawkinsRead
We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
Thomas HuxleyRead
Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.
Martin H. FischerRead
Challenges in medicine are moving from 'Treat the symptoms after the house is on fire' to 'Can we preserve the house intact?'
Elizabeth BlackburnRead
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.
Lord KelvinRead
Stone tools are fossilized human behavior.
Louis LeakeyRead