Author's Note xi
Chapter 1 Jurassic Cancer 5
A strange fossil from Colorado
Pathology of dinosaur bones
Monster tumors
The epidemiology of extinction
Cancer in ancient beasts
Tumors in sunflowers
Fish, reptiles, and amphibians
"Why Don't All Whales Have Cancer?"
A curious law of nature
Contemplating the odds
Chapter 2 Nancy's Story 22
Food pyramidology
Pascal's Wager
Folates, antioxidants, and Finnish smokers
Fruits, vegetables, and giant steaks
Carcinogenic estrogen
The real risks of cigarettes
Emanations from the earth
Cancer clusters
A worrisome lump
Nancy's cancer
Chapter 3 The Consolations of Anthropology 41
In the boneyards of Kenya
Face-to-face with Kanam man
Palaeo-Oncology
Hippocrates and the crabs
The wild beast of cancer
Metastasis in a Scythian king
Skeletons and mummies
Visions of an ancient paradise
Counting up the dead
Chapter 4 Invasion of the Body Snatchers 58
"Large and beautifully pellucid cells"
Morbid juices
Seeds and soil
The mysteries of metastasis
A horrifying precision
The ebb and flow of lymph
The surgeon's diagnosis
Weeds from outer space
Chapter 5 Information Sickness 70
Man-made mutations
Funny-looking chromosomes
"A new kind of cell"
Matter that comes alive
The Radium Girls
Coal tar and tumors
Viral invaders
Oncogenes and tumor suppressors
Cellular suicide
Intimations of immortality
A conspiracy of cells
Chapter 6 "How Heart Cells Embrace Their Fate" 82
Embryos and tumors
Snail, slug, and twist
Sonic hedgehog
the Pokémon gene
Cyclopean sheep
Holoproscncephaly
1 + 1 = 3
Prayers of an agnostic
An endless day at the hospital
Chapter 7 Where Cancer Really Comes From 92
The surprising aftermath of Love Ganal
What "environment" really means
"The Causes of Cancer"
An environmental turncoat
The carcinogens in coffee
Mitogenesis and mutagenesis
Making sense of the cancer statistics
A maverick presidential report
Chapter 8 "Adriamycin and Posole for Christmas Eve" 109
Cancer cells and magnets
The penicillin of cancer
A rare kind of malignancy
Disheartening statistics
"The Median Isn't the Message"
Flying farolitos
A visit to MD Anderson
Rothko's brooding chapel
Chapter 9 Deeper into the Cancer Cell 121
A physics of cancer
Epigenetic software
The stem cell conundrum
An enormous meeting in Orlando
Espresso and angiogenesis
The news from Oz
Communing withthe microbiome
Beyond the double helix
Dancing at the Cancer Ball
Chapter 10 The Metabolic Mess 139
Chimney sweeps and nuns
A "mysterious sympathy"
The case of the missing carcinogens
The rise and fall of vegetables
A mammoth investigation
The insulin-obesity connection
"Wounds that do not heal"
A hundred pounds of sugar
Skewing the energy equation
Chapter 11 Gambling with Radiation 153
Flunking the radon test
A ubiquitous carcinogen
Down in the uranium mines
Tourism at Chernobyl
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Exhuming Curie's grave
A pocketful of radium
Robot oncologists
Relay for Life
Chapter 12 The Immortal Demon 167
A flight to Boston
Stand Up to Cancer
A tale of two cousins
The return of the hedgehog
Where weird drug names come from
Waiting for super trastuzumab
Orphaned cancers
Biological game theory
Contagious cancer
Chapter 13 Beware the Echthroi 182
On Microwave Mountain
Cell phones and brain waves
Is cancer here "on purpose"?
Physicists and oncologists
Snapshots of a proteome
Five crazy ideas
Mitochondria and farandolae
Maxwell's triumphant demon
Epilogue Joe's Cancer 196
Notes 205
Index 269