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

There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It's a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel.

Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary principles are very complicated and often its capacity to be constantly mystifying comes as a big challenge.

I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many different things into one big category.

All cancers are alike but they are alike in a unique way.

History repeats, but science reverberates.

A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.