A world-class oncologist’s devastating and deeply personal study of cancer We’ve lost the battle on malignancy. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet — several innovations notwithstanding — an individual with cancers is as likely to expire of it as you was fifty years back. Most new medications add mere months to one’s existence at agonizing physical and financial price. In The Initial Cell, Azra Raza gives a searing accounts of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how exactly we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and again, The First Cell explores malignancy from every position: medical, technological, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her very own husband’s oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is definitely no ordinary reserve of medication, but a reserve of wisdom and elegance by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable better to bear.