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Cancer : The Emperor Of All Maladies

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“Cancer: the Emperor of all Maladies” tells the story of humanity’s struggle to eradicate cancer, as well as the leaps and bounds we have taken in understanding the nature of the disease. Sadly the War on Cancer declared by Richard Nixon in 1971 is still ongoing, and although many new technologies, medicines and techniques have been introduced, there are still instances where we are wholly defenseless in our fight against an ancient illness. Cancer is not a foreign infectious disease, nor is there one single cause for all cancers, cancer instead is when your own body cells stop following the instructions they need to remain liver, bone or epithelial cells, and instead because autonomous and self-serving. We started back in Egypt, knowing that cancer was a disease, and that it could not be stopped, and throughout history, humanity has fought hard for the chance to finally eradicate cancer. Unfortunately, this has not yet happened and our fight with cancer has been mostly driven by luck. Blind attempts that actually appeared to work sparked excitement, and caused huge pressures from desperate people for the release of untested drugs, most of which ended up being failures (like VAMP). The one thing that has become clear throughout the documentary, and one of the main themes, is that we cannot effectively fight what we do not understand. Increases in our knowledge of cancer, when translated into medicines and treatments have led to some of the most innovative and

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