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10 - The Road to Utopia?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2022

Robin Hesketh
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

In this final chapter we review briefly the current chemotherapy picture, highlighting the ingenious methods in development or in early trials that hold real promise. The cancer pathway has threaded its way through human history for four millennia and its course is marked by milestones of major advances that have saved many lives and offered much hope. It is also littered with the skeletons of failed experiments and dashed optimism. However, the present vista is breathtaking in that, as never before, the sciences of physics, chemistry and mathematics have converged on medicine to offer a bewildering cancer cocktail. Even with the warnings of history ringing in our ears, it seems reasonable to predict that the next 20 years will, at last, bring us to a point where we can regard most cancers as controllable. In consuming the elixir that follows we can be sure that some parts will fade to oblivion but others will surely survive and prosper to benefit all mankind.

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Chapter
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Understanding Cancer , pp. 174 - 199
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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