Short description
From the National Book Award finalist and author of When Smoke Ran Like Water comes this searing, haunting, and deeply personal account of how a major public health effort was diverted and distorted for private gain.
Long description
The War on Cancer set out to find, treat, and cure a disease. Left untouched were many of the things known to cause cancer, including tobacco, the workplace, radiation, or the global environment. Proof of how the world in which we live and work affects whether we get cancer was either overlooked or suppressed. This has been no accident. The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products, and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies-a legacy that persists to this day. This is the gripping story of a major public health effort diverted and distorted for private gain. A portion of the profits from this book will go to support research on cancer prevention.
Review
(S)tartling, original, enormously disturbing... compelling. Spectator (Devra Davis) is an epidemiologist and public-health scientist at the top of her game...The Secret History of the War on Cancer is a remarkable piece of sleuthing from one of our most brave and knowledgeable scientists. TLS