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

History repeats, but science reverberates.

Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own. Susan Sontag warned against overburdening an illness with metaphors. But this is not a metaphor. Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.

Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for.

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

Could your medicine be a cell, not a pill? Could your medicine be an organ that's created outside the body? Could your medicine be an environment?

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.