My ideal summer day was reading on the porch.

A cancer is not simply a lung cancer. It doesn't simply have a certain kind of appearance under the microscope or a certain behavior, but it also has a set of changes in the genes or in the molecules that modify gene behavior that allows us to categorize cancers in ways that is very useful in thinking about new ways to control cancer by prevention and treatment.

Science can improve lives in ways that are elegant in design and moving in practice.

Every cancer looks different. Every cancer has similarities to other cancers. And were trying to milk those differences and similarities to do a better job of predicting how things are going to work out and making new drugs.

In general, all cancers have been traditionally characterized by the way they appear under the microscope and the organs in which they arise.

Anyone graduating from medical school in 1966 had first to fulfill military service before launching a career. Fiercely opposed to the Vietnam War, I sought to avoid it through an assignment to the Public Health Service.

I had learned of Gertrude Steins bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.