The Conquest of Cancer

" Dr. Guy B. Faguet' s The Conquest of Cancer: A distant Goal takes the reader on a fascinating journey of decades of cancer research. In a meticulous manner, Dr. Faguet resumes his story from where he left us with his previous work The War on Cancer: An anatomy of failure; A blueprint for the future, just a decade ago. He goes into some very pertinent details about the current hot topic in cancer research; i. e. , the genetic basis of various types of cancer and current understanding of cancer spreads. A large section of the book is devoted of why there has been a rather unfortunate stagnation or what Faguet calls " status quo" , and what role does National Cancer Institute play despite its leader' s well-meaning enthusiasm. The author deserves our gratitude for a forthright, very necessary, and very timely discussion on end of life care and management of advanced stage cancer. To this reader, the section on the history of how President Nixon came to embrace the fight against cancer, devoting a significant part of his January 22, 1971 State of the Union address and how he successfully maneuvered to have Senator Edward Kennedy withdraw his name as sponsor of the bill (National Cancer Act), which Mr. Nixon signed as a Christmas gift to the nation on December 23, 1971 not only is very interesting, but it also informs us how intimately does politics play a part in cancer research. Dr. Faguet writes in a highly readable style, accessible both to the lay public as well as cancer researchers. His authoritative and unbiased account of the present status of the war against cancer - not a pretty picture, provides hope for success in the immediate future because of breakthrough progress in molecular genetics of cancer. "


Kanti Rai, M. D.


Joel Finkelstein Cancer Foundation Professor of Medicine


Professor of Medicine


Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine


New York, NY