ONE RENEGADE CELL

Seminal book on how cancer develops in humans. Very well written and complex scientific ideas explained in simple easy to understand language

Loved it

I am very interested in the subject matter (for personal reasons) and have no scientific background other than basic biology in high school and college. I selected this book because of the subject matter and because other reviewers said that it did NOT require a strong medical/scientific background.The book does not deal so much with cancer in terms of how it affects the body, but rather, the life cycle of cancer at the cellular level. In particular, how "one renegade cell" becomes cancerous and grows into a tumor. The examples and explanations run the gamut of many different kinds of cancer (lung, breast, ovarian, retinal, lymphomas, and others). It's heavily focued on DNA and cell replication.I found the book very well written. The technical details did overwhelm me at times, but I kept working through it because of my interest in the subject matter. I think that I probably grasped only 30-40% of the real detail here, and I admit that in some sections I'd read the first half of a chapter and kind of skim the rest of it because it was just over my head. However, I still got a LOT out of the book and read it through to the end. I feel like I was able to get the gist of everything, but didn't necessarily have a full understanding of everything the author presented.I do, however, think that this book has given me enough of an understanding of cancer so that I can now understand the oncologist better and also have an increased level of understanding when reading about cancer and cancer drugs as it affects myself and people close to me.Let me explain my 3 ranking. I'm simply not technical enough to be able to speak to the technical accuracy and timeliness of the content of this book; so I couldn't give it a 5. I did find it fairly readable, and I like how the author sometimes used real life examples to explain concepts (like reference to a car with it's accelerator stuck ON or the brakes failing), so it certainly deserves something higher than 1. So, I split the difference and gave it a 3. It would be helpful for reviewers to identify the degree of technical knowledge that they have in these review. I would really be interested to hear what a practicing oncologist, an family doctor, and/or a grad student in molecular biology has to say about the book; just to give it some perspective. I also think it would be great if the author could partner with someone to take the same content, and simply take it down another notch (less scientific/more targeted to the layman). I'm sure there would be a market for this, as there are so many people impacted by cancer, and we all want to understand it better.

A close relative of mine is a cancer survivor, and the shadow of this horrific disease has become a new member in our family. Weinberg's book is a quick and very well written primer for the layman on cancer and the history of oncological research. Not only does it contain up to date information about the latest genetic discoveries in the field, but it also presents them in a didatic and lighthearted style only an insider could offer. Reading this book, I felt like having a glimpse of the kind of books that will be written abou cancer in (hopefully) 20 years: books in which all the mechanisms leading to tumor formation will be laid bare for the student, and effective therapies will be available for all kinds of cancer, with minor burden of side effects. Books in which all the suffering caused by cancer nowadays will be as part of medical history as polio is. I felt enpowered by this book and actually enjoyed reading it (the account of how a virus can cause cancer by stealing proto oncogenes from normal cells is fascinating). The only reason I have not given 5 stars is some difficulty in the last chapters due to the complicated naming conventions of genes, but I guess this is a fault of the unfinished status of genetic oncology and my ignorance. If cancer or the history of medical research in general interests you, I strongly recommend this book.

I just have finished the book which I bought 3 years ago but then did not read it as the book is hard for me to handle with only a left hand. But after my wife 4 weeks ago were stated having cancer I read it in the past week.Among other reasons I also bought the book because I in many privies read books had seen references to Robert A. Weinberg.The book is good in telling the history concerning solving most of the problems about how the cells groves and increases, and especially why cancer don't stop living, having no finishing age. It's a clear and detailed writing, even though it was a little bit heavy for me as many years have passed since I was in school concerning biology. And I can se that much new knowing has come since then back in the 1960es. But as we in the book go through what's going on in the cells I must say that it's much like thinking concerning programming software for the Pc.And on side 115 is mentioned an interested discovery in 1972 by Jams Watson, who I only remember for the discovery of DNA in 1953.Weinberg finish the book by writing that in the future the successors will look back on these discoveries in the last quarter of the twentieth century as a historical curiosity, but that's only the same which again and again has happened concerning other researches in science. That's nearly always first going to one side and then to the other, and disbelieving what researchers discover to early the others to believe.

I actually first bought and read this book eight years ago and really liked it. I thought it was very technical, but not too technical for a lay audience and did a good job of explaining the "superpowers" a cell must acquire to become cancerous. Then I lent it to one of I my high school biology students who developed an interest in cancer reasearch after I presented a unit on cancer. She also enjoyed the book, though admitted it was a hard read fo her. However, she went on to major in molecular biology at UCLA and did undergrad reasearch on cancer and is now pursuing a PhD in immunology at UCSF and I think this book helped motivate all that. I bought a second copy of this book recently for my dad, who was diagnosed with cancer and trying to learn more about it. He said the book was too difficult for him to follow so maybe best for a lay audience with a solid biology foundation as a good primer for understand cancer. My dad did take biology in college but that was 50 years ago! The field has advanced greatly since then while his memory has not. But for anyone with a good science foundation, this book is manageable and extremely interesting.

Overall, a good presentation of the most complicated biology of cancer, by a biochemist. The writing style is average, I would prefer more structure and development of the theses. Targeted obviously to the layman, avoiding every mention of technical terms. Missing several issues, but since the book is over 20 years old, it's unfair to judge on that.