Cancer: The Enemy from Within

Description:

This comprehensive, ground-breaking title presents, in simplifying style, the driving and organizing principles of cancer, making this multidimensional, highly complex disease easily understandable for readers.  Developed out of the renowned author’s many years of teaching a widely popular, several-hundred-student college course, this 12-chapter book begins with an account of the history of cancer as a medical and public health problem, as well as the major milestones and setbacks in the ongoing quest to understand the wide variety of cancers that continue to impact the world.  Subsequent chapters then address pathogenesis, incidence and mortality statistics, risk factors, causal factors, screening challenges and victories, treatment strategies, and disease prevention approaches. This wealth of clinical information is further supplemented with socioeconomic discussions on the financial, social, ethical, technological, regulatory, political, and logistical challenges that limit progress in cancer research.     A soon to be gold-standard text that thoroughly and expertly describes cancer as a composite, adaptive system, Cancer: The Enemy from Within equips and empowers all undergraduate students and graduate students to better understand this continually perplexing disease. Clinicians across all disciplines may also find this work of great interest.

Table of Contents:

1. The Nature and Origins of Cancer

2. Cancer Initiation, Promotion, and Progression and the Acquisition of Key Behavioral Traits

3. Understanding the Hallmark Characteristics of Cancer

4. A Short History of Cancer: How Did We Get Here?

5. Who Gets Cancer and Why? What Are the Consequences for Human Life and Longevity? How Can We Intervene? How Can We Track Progress?

6. Screening for Cancer: Find It Early; Treat It Early; Save Lives

7. Fundamentals of Cancer Diagnosis and Assessment

8. Local Therapy for Cancer

9. Systemic Therapy for Cancer

10. Palliative Care, Hospice, and End of Life

11. Development of New Cancer Therapies

12. Cancer and Society

Correction to: The Nature and Origins of Cancer