Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population is ageing overall. And cancer is an age-related disease.

This was yet another colonial fascination: to create the conditions of misery in a population, then subject it to social or medical experimentation.

One swallow is a coincidence, but two swallows make summer.

I am a scientist and I am a physician. So I write papers.

Most days, I go home and I feel rejuvenated. I feel ebullient.

In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son's baseball team.

Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.