Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us / Edition 1

by S. Lochlann Jain

Overview

Nearly half of all Americans will be diagnosed with an invasive cancer—an all-too ordinary aspect of daily life. Through a powerful combination of cultural analysis and memoir, this stunningly original book explores why cancer remains so confounding, despite the billions of dollars spent in the search for a cure. Amidst furious debates over its causes and treatments, scientists generate reams of data—information that ultimately obscures as much as it clarifies. Award-winning anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain deftly unscrambles the high stakes of the resulting confusion. Expertly reading across a range of material that includes history, oncology, law, economics, and literature, Jain explains how a national culture that simultaneously aims to deny, profit from, and cure cancer entraps us in a state of paradox—one that makes the world of cancer virtually impossible to navigate for doctors, patients, caretakers, and policy makers alike. This chronicle, burning with urgency and substance leavened with brio and wit, offers a lucid guide to understanding and navigating the quicksand of uncertainty at the heart of cancer. Malignant vitally shifts the terms of an epic battle we have been losing for decades: the war on cancer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520276574
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/15/2013
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,097,976
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

S. Lochlann Jain is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and author of Injury: The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States.

Table of Contents

Introduction: We Just Don’t Know It Yet
1. Living in Prognosis: The Firing Squad of Statistics
2. Poker Face: Gaming a Lifespan
3. Cancer Butch: Trip Up the Fast Lane
4. Lost Chance: Medical Mistakes
5. The Mortality Effect: The Future in Cancer Trials
6. Inconceivable: Where IVF Goes Bad
7. Can Sir: What Screening Doesn’t Do
8. Fallout: Minuets in the Key of Fear
9. Rubble: Bakelite Bodies
Conclusion: Shameless

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Malignant is a wonderful book . . . In this candid and critical analysis, [Jain] . . . eloquently captures the ambiguity and uncertainty that undergird every aspect of cancer."

Journal of Anthropological Research

"A whip-smart read."

Discover

"The book is compelling and engaging."

CHOICE

"Jain uses dry wit, irony, and occasionaly glee."

Anthropological Quarterly

"The book effortlessly combines the author’s roles as a first-person participant in cancer diagnosis and an anthropological authority on why we Americans tolerate high rates of cancer."

Public Books

"Brilliant."

Nature

"A dark journey into cancer as it is understood, diagnosed and treated in America today."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

"A whip-smart read."-- "Discover"

"Brilliant."-- "Nature"

"Jain uses dry wit, irony, and occasionaly glee."-- "Anthropological Quarterly"

"The book is compelling and engaging."-- "CHOICE"

"Malignant is a wonderful book . . . In this candid and critical analysis, [Jain] . . . eloquently captures the ambiguity and uncertainty that undergird every aspect of cancer."-- "Journal of Anthropological Research"

"The book effortlessly combines the author's roles as a first-person participant in cancer diagnosis and an anthropological authority on why we Americans tolerate high rates of cancer."-- "Public Books"

From the Publisher

"Brilliant."

Nature Lib

2013-09-15
A dark journey into cancer as it is understood, diagnosed and treated in America today. Jain (Anthropology/Stanford Univ.; Injury: The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States, 2006, etc.) aims to balance the objectivity of the field anthropologist with the perspective of being a cancer patient herself. The author does a fine job critiquing a controversial article damning early screening, but she also finds fault with cancer statistics, including five-year survival rates (since they emphasize survival against the odds and one's personal agency in the "battle"). Elsewhere, Jain's voice is angry and embittered, amplified in her case by three years' of misdiagnoses; by the time she was correctly diagnosed, her breast cancer was in its late stages. Her personal involvement prompted research into cancer history, attendance at oncology conferences, and participation in survivor groups and retreats. She has also explored the cancer industrial complex, noting that companies developing treatments might also market pesticides or dump toxic wastes. She is angry that, for all the billions poured into research, we still don't understand what cancer is and where it comes from. She faults the National Cancer Institute for looking more at the genetics of cancer rather than environmental causes. Ditto the Food and Drug Administration for their failure to test myriad new or already marketed chemicals for cancer risks. In that regard, Jain wonders whether the intense hormonal treatment given to generate multiple eggs for in vitro fertilization (that she went through for a friend) might have contributed to her cancer. Finally, she observes that with all the publicity and promotion of runs "for the cure," cancer still stigmatizes and blames the victim--or else mitigates the aftermath of treatment with cheery brochures of smiling bewigged women with new breast prostheses. Not a pretty story, but a heartfelt communication to patients and families that merits study by government agencies, policymakers and health professionals.

Kirkus Reviews

"A whip-smart read."

Discover - Becky Lang

"Brilliant."

Nature - Barbara Kiser