Malignant Ho Cancer Becomes Us [Hardcover]

Nearly half of all Americans will be diagnosed with an invasive canceran all-too ordinary aspect of daily life. Through a powerful combination of cultural analysis and memoir, this stunningly original book explores why cancer remains so confounding, despite the billions of dollars spent in the search for a cure. Amidst furious debates over its causes and treatments, scientists generate reams of datainformation that ultimately obscures as much as it clarifies. Award-winning anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain deftly unscrambles the high stakes of the resulting confusion. Expertly reading across a range of material that includes history, oncology, law, economics, and literature, Jain explains how a national culture that simultaneously aims to deny, profit from, and cure cancer entraps us in a state of paradoxone that makes the world of cancer virtually impossible to navigate for doctors, patients, caretakers, and policy makers alike. This chronicle, burning with urgency and substance leavened with brio and wit, offers a lucid guide to understanding and navigating the quicksand of uncertainty at the heart of cancer.Malignantvitally shifts the terms of an epic battle we have been losing for decades: the war on cancer.

S. Lochlann Jain is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and author ofInjury:The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States.

Introduction: We Just Dont Know It Yet
1. Living in Prognosis: The Firing Squad of Statistics
2. Poker Face: Gaming a Lifespan
3. Cancer Butch: Trip Up the Fast Lane
4. Lost Chance: Medical Mistakes
5. The Mortality Effect: The Future in Cancer Trials
6. Inconceivable: Where IVF Goes Bad
7. Can Sir: What Screening Doesnt Do
8. Fallout: Minuets in the Key of Fear
9. Rubble: Bakelite Bodies
Conclusion: Shameless

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

The writing is marvelous and the schollƒ-