A Conspiracy of Cells: The Basic Science of Cancer

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee. Text for cancer patients on cancer: what it is, how do you get it, what is known about tumor biology, what are successful treatments, what are future therapies? Examines 14 of the most common cancers.

This book, written especially for the cancer patient, attempts to make the disease and its treatment less mysterious and less terrifying. Steen covers the pathology of cancer, its causes, and how tumors are formed as well as their growth and metastases in the first several chapters. Immune response and patient-tumor interactions are also covered. Two chapters provide overviews of cancer treatment: the first deals primarily with the treatments now in use or in clinical trials; the second deals with treatments that are becoming possibilities. Nearly half the book is devoted to the most common of the different types of cancer. Each of these chapters looks at a specific region of the body, explains the different forms the disease takes there, and looks into rates of occurrence, risk factors, natural history, or course of the cancer. Steen's contention that a "fully informed patient is better equipped to make . . . difficult choices" should provide an impetus for those suffering from this dreaded disease to read his book. But this is an important book for everyone because, as Steen says in his closing chapter, "if the present rates continue, 20% of us will die from cancer." Patrick Wall