In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radiation and what have you. But a positive mental attitude does not cure cancer - any more than a negative mental attitude causes cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee More Quotes by Siddhartha Mukherjee More Quotes From Siddhartha Mukherjee When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple. Siddhartha Mukherjee realising medicine simple Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery. Siddhartha Mukherjee quality writing discovery I could write a thesis on the physiology of vision. But I had no way to look through the fabric of confabulation spun by a man with severe lung disease who was prescribed 'home oxygen', but gave a false address out of embarrassment because he had no 'home.' Siddhartha Mukherjee look man vision home Cancer is not just a dividing cell. It's a complex disease: It invades, it metastasizes, it evades the immune system. Siddhartha Mukherjee complex just cancer disease We now have poured in an enormous amount of resources into cancer. The National Cancer Institute Project, you know, runs about $5 billion a year. That's a large amount of money, but let's not be grandiose about the amount of money we're actually spending on a problem that is attacking us at the most fundamental level of the human species. Siddhartha Mukherjee know you money problem We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset and how we do research. We haven't quite reached there yet. Siddhartha Mukherjee live die research change My memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music. I have a very intimate relationship with Bengali literature, particularly Tagore, and my interest besides reading then was music. Siddhartha Mukherjee memory music reading relationship What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person's life that is so hyper-acute, and not just because they're medically ill. It's also a moment of hope and expectation and concern. Siddhartha Mukherjee moment you hope life There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population - we aren't dying of other things, so we're dying of cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee things population dying said
