I know how I’m going to spend the entirety of my Christmas break: preparing to teach my new Cancer Biology course. And since I’m going to be dwelling on cancer for the next month or so, I think it’s only fair that my students and any passers-by should also get a faceful of the stuff. So here are the texts I’ve settled on for the course:
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Weinberg’s Biology of Cancer
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Skloot’s Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies
There will also be a few papers assigned throughout the term, but that ought to get everyone started on a good long depression.
Am currently reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Very good book and can recommend it.
I’m getting 404’s for all three links. I tried two web browsers too. Don’t know if it’s a problem on your end.
I just finished the Henrietta Lacks book a while back. Excellent book! Great balance of science and story.
More depressed young adults? Awesome!
Fight mental illness/depression, stop PZ! :P
JT
I just bought The Emperor of All Maladies for our office’s annual gift exchange. The coworker who’d already read it said good things.
When the UMM convocations committee met over the summer we were actually thinking about bringing out Rebecca Skloot but wasn’t sure if there would be any interest (so instead we settled on The Eagleman).
Jebus! Thanks a heap, PZ!
(I am currently part way through Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; interesting and well-written, though not as great as I expected after all the rave reviews I had read/heard. The perennial fate of all ravingly reviewed books, I guess!)
I see Rebecca Skloot, who wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks interviewed with Colbert, if any are interested: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267542/march-16-2010/rebecca-skloot
Not to be a wet blanket, but why the HeLa book? It’s a fascinating story, but peripheral to the biology of Ca, and only a minor part even of the history of Ca research.
I’d think Mukherjee would cover the human-interest angle, and leave room for another more technical text.
I read Mukherjee’s “The Emperor of All Maladies” a month ago. I highly recommend it for giving non-professionals the big picture. It was a far more gripping narrative than I expected.
Cancer always gets me in the festive spirit!
Will you be covering Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumor or Devil Facial Tumor Disease?
My wife just finished Skloot’s book on HeLa. She loved it and its on my shelf of toberead books. As wifey shared much of the book as she was reading it (lots of, “oooh listen to this” and, “this is amazing”), I may not get around to it very soon.
At $100 for the paperback (even if it is reduced from $140) I might give The Biology of Cancer a miss. As an engineer I’m not sure I’d understand it anyway. The other two books look interesting though.
Skloot’s book is personal, and very engaged with the ethics of cancer and cancer research, the subjects I intend to focus on in the first two weeks of the class. A lot of the course is going to be very impersonal and molecular (Weinberg) with some humanism (Mukherjee) lathered on top, and I want to set the tone early so that we don’t forget that these fascinating oncogenes and signaling pathways are also part of a serious human problem.
I’d find it very easy to just charge in to genes and molecules, so it’s also a corrective for me.
Because how medical research and scientific understanding are seen by people outside the scientific communities, and can deeply affect their lives, is a core theme of the book; and personally I think it’s important that scientists understand themselves as passionate participants in a wider culture. (Anyway, if I were teaching PZ’s course which I’m not, that would be my reason for choosing this book.)
…Or what PZ said. (Darn slow refresh.)
Can you recommend a good evo devo textbook? I just got my BS, but my department unfortunately doesn’t seem to have anyone doing evo devo, nevermind teaching it. I haven’t entirely given up on the idea of grad school, and it wouldn’t hurt to try to teach myself a bit in the meantime anyway. Thanks.
I hated Skloot’s book, and really wanted to like it. It’s more the story of how awesome the author is and how much Henrietta’s daughter looooooves her, and very little about Henrietta’s actual story, the science, or the ethics of medical research. Skloot paints the family as a bunch of greedy idiots, the scientists as immoral and racist, and herself as the hero that finally gave the family a bit of what they wanted.
There has to be a better popular science book out there covering those issues, but I haven’t read any. Any suggestions?
Excellent line up PZ. Skloot’s and Mukherjee’s books are among the best I have read in the past year. Weinberg’s text is the best on cancer biology. I haven’t read all of it, but what I have read is very good.
Trep, I don’t know of a great textbook, but Carrol’s book Endless Froms Most Beautiful is very good and has been used at my university.
The Emperor of All Maladies is one of the best books I’ve read ever. Highly recommended. If you want so be inspired by the sheer power and wonder of science it’s unbeatable.
The Henrietta Lacks book is also very good. I haven’t read Weinberg’s Biology of Cancer but I may have to give it a look.
Pteryxx 16, Roving Rock-Hound 19:
I don’t know that either of you is entirely wrong. I got a whiff of both from my reading.
In any case, the book is eminently discussable. I think it would work great in a cancer biology course.
¿Henrietta´s chromosomes lacks telomeros?
*shrug* it IS very personal and it’s designed to be read by a lay audience as an introduction to the ethical issues. I learned almost nothing scientific that I didn’t already know, but I think the stories are still valuable teaching tools as stories. For instance, that cell culture became so widespread largely because Gey didn’t bother to restrict knowledge of his techniques or patent the roller drum he invented. There’s no reason in this book to spend more time on the actual issue of patents in research than it already does; I’d rather learn about Gey and his working conditions. For another example, if I’m going to try and communicate science to people who don’t have my background, I want to know how confusing and foreign it might sound from their point of view. And I think Skloot’s inclusion of herself in the narrative (which she admits in the text is unconventional and un-reporterlike) serves as counterpoint to how scientists usually think of themselves as impartial and removed from the objects of study, when erasing that distinction is pretty much the entire theme of the book.
I might directly tackle Rockhound’s complaints later.
As my background is software with a dash of Chemistry (don’t ask) what sort of prereqs would be needed for the text book?
At $100 for the paperback (even if it is reduced from $140) I might give The Biology of Cancer a miss. As an engineer I’m not sure I’d understand it anyway. The other two books look interesting though.
Comes with a CD-ROM tho. Lotsa extra graphs and pictures if the text doesn’t do it for you.
Shorter Weinberg: in cancer biology all major roads start from and ultimately lead back to activated ras protein.
Biology of cancer is worth every cent, it was our primary course book when I took a course in Molecular mechanisms of cancer a couple of semesters ago. I just might have to buy the Emperor of all maladies for myself for giftmas.
I have the Malady book on my “read sometime on holiday list” . I am a physics teacher who is now gotta teach a general science course with a cell biology component. Would it be a good idea to read the book as a fizzics geek looking to expand his mind or would it be a good book to learn some details about cells I haven’t seen since Pluto was a planet? The answer will determine when I read it.
The cancer course was not in the least depressing but it made you very paranoid, every minor ache was immediately diagnosed as a sign of cancer. And some of the lectures should’ve come with a warning sign. Gigantic photos of liver metastases and in situ bladder cancer are serious fodder for some pretty graphic nightmares.
Trust me on this.
Did we even read the same book?
– Pinging is currently not allowed.-
I have no idea what this is, I sincerely hope I’m not guilty of it. If I am I’m sorry.
Pinging was disabled because 95% of it was commercial spam.
Loved Skloot’s book. It was one of those books that made me neglect my children & feed them nothing but PB&J and apple slices for the 12hours it took me to read it. Fascinating, especially for someone who hadn’t taken biology since high school freshman bio. It was given to me by a friend who works with HeLa cells daily in a flow cytometry lab.
I liked the Skloot book for the insights it gave into racism, race and medicine in the 20th century and the massive challenges faced by rural black Americans transitioning to the city. But as the book went on, I found the degree to which she became involved with the Lacks family very creepy.
ras
raf
MEK
ERK
…Sorry. Just automatically blurting out the part of the signaling pathway that I learned by heart like a magic formula.
Most of those details weren’t even known back then.
Yeah, I’m afraid my lectures next semester will sound rather orcish — all gutteral monosyllables.
PZ – on a slight tangent… (and at the risk of sycophantic gushing)
I want to thank you for being one of, I assume, many others teaching Cancer biology.
I hope that one or more of your students is invigorated enough by the subject to pursue it further and become part of the scientific cadre of persons seeking preventions and cures for this insidious disease.
I say this as a very recent sufferer and ‘survivor’ of a radical nephrectomy due to a very large RCC on my right kidney. No symptoms until ‘renal colic’ put me in hospital where a CT scan discovered the extent of the problem.
The care staff and surgeons were incredible, especially due to the late diagnosis and tricky nature of my procedure. That several people chose to specialise in this area saved my life. Another 2 – 8 weeks and this would have killed me. 8 years ago, I am informed, and I would have died anyway.
So, again, I hope you inspire one or many to continue working in this area, for obvious reasons.
pyttank, no worries, pinging means “pingbacks” which are automatic comments generated when another blogger links to this post.
PZ: looks like a great course, but, if you haven’t already, you may want to consider adding some caveats as to the label “cancer”. Among many, Picard’s recent piece in the Globe and Mail might be a good starting point for your students: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/andre-picard/can-the-word-cancer-be-more-harmful-than-the-disease/article2268364/
Open Source HTML course work please.
$100 for a paperback – even with a DVD is double charging kids for their education.
My father was an academic and HAD to publish in hardback and the publishers did very well from it – much much better than he did.
You don’t have to these days and the data can be fixed so much more easily and cross referenced.
Pteryxx
This internet and computer language illiterate thanks you.
I guess there is only room for so many languages in my head and none of these made it.
Just an addendum to expensive course books:
Student Prostitution
Double??? Have you priced college courses these days?
If this were a course for students who were going to get their degree and go directly into the work force, I would feel very guilty about assigning a $100 textbook. However, these are largely students who will be going on to professional and graduate schools — this is a course that will be merely starting them on the path to understanding cancer biology. I chose that book because it will have lasting value for them.
I’m also very glad to see the differing opinions on Skloot’s book. It’s really boring to have a discussion where everyone agrees — I hope some of the students have the same reservations so we can get a good argument going in the classroom.
It is important for these students to actively consider the interface of medicine, science, and the public that these disciplines serve.
I worked as a technician in a medical research lab for a few years. During this time, I handled thousands of clinical samples: blood, serum, and tissue collected from real people in the throes of disease. Our goal was to obtain a datum from each of these samples, to be collectively used to test hypotheses. As data, these were valuable. However, I remember being struck from time to time, that these data were hallmarks of real suffering, and this was a powerful motivator to work all the more carefully, or for want of a better word, reverently. So they were valuable in this regard as well.
Good for your class, PZ.
The textbook business is in many ways a racket. Yet, I don’t regret having bought a single one of them. I still have most of mine.
I’d be roundly chastised by my professors if I didn’t tell you to mention the Philadelphia Chromosome :)
-From Penn
One of the other good things about the Skloot book is how she treats the subject of medical ethics and informed consent. She does an excellent job of showing how these issues have evolved over time, and how doctors in the past (and not-too-distant past) routinely and legally did things that we would consider horribly unethical today. I think this is an excellent topic for student discussion.
I still hate how the book ended up degenerating into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie…….