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I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Siddhartha Mukherjee
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: January 1
Academic
Essayist
Non-Fiction Writer
Oncologist
Physician
Physician Writer
Scientist
New Delhi district
Going
Cancer
Researcher
Time
Instinct
Cellular
Level
Ward
Levels
Withdraw
Seen
Bleak
Death
Researchers
Firsts
Entered
First
Complexity

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In the laboratory, we call this the six-degrees-of-separation-from-cancer rule: you can ask any biological question, no matter how seemingly distant-what makes the heart fail, or why worms age, or even how birds learn songs-and you will end up, in fewer than six genetic steps, connecting with a proto-oncogene or tumor suppressor.
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I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.
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I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recent visits to Delhi, I've started to realize that the city has become intellectually very lively. It makes me want to discover the city over and over again.
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All cancers are alike but they are alike in a unique way.
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A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.
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Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.
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Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient.
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