Early Detection

Préface

• Promote the book with digital advertising and extensive social media campaign.
• Pitch op-eds, excerpts, and reviews to wide array of publications including Undark Magazine, MedPage Today, Medscape, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, and more.
• Pitch television, radio, and podcast interviews to shows including TED Health, PBS NewsHour, NPR & WBUR’s Here & Now, MSNBC’s Craig Melvin Reports, The Peter Attia Drive, and more.
• Host major book launch in New York, along with events in bookstores throughout the country (either virtually or in person).






Auteur

In his long career, Bruce Ratner served as New York City’s Commissioner of Consumer Affairs, an NYU law professor and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, a major property developer. He led the economic revival of Downtown Brooklyn, built the Barclays Center arena, brought the Nets NBA basketball franchise to Brooklyn, and helped restore Times Square, including building The New York Times headquarters. For more than two decades, Mr. Ratner has applied his deep interest and background in the sciences by serving on the boards of Weill Cornell Medicine, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He also founded the Michael D. Ratner Center for Early Detection of Cancer, in memory of his brother, to advance the cause of expanding the adoption of life-saving cancer screening and research into new diagnostic tests. Through the center, Mr. Ratner has promoted early detection testing for lung cancer, particularly in low income and underserved populations. Mr. Ratner is also Chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. He was founding chairman of the New York City Parks Foundation and, for a decade, served as chairman of the board at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 
 Adam Bonislawskiis a science writer with more than 10 years of experience covering genomic and proteomic research and diagnostics development with a focus on cancer and early detection. His writing ranges widely over academic research, companies and technologies. The publications he writes for, GenomeWeb and 360Dx, are read by thousands of cancer researchers and doctors as well as a wide range of healthcare entrepreneurs and investors, and he has scientific and media contacts at many of the major cancer and academic research centers in the United States and Europe. In addition to his work as a science writer, Adam writes about business and real estate for the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Commercial Observer.

Texte du rabat

"Catching cancer early remains the single best way to combat a disease that is the second-leading killer in both the US and worldwide. But the vast majority of resources in the fight against cancer are devoted to relatively ineffective late stage treatments. Early Detection examines this important anomaly in an accessible and expertly researched survey. In a co-authorship that brings together the passion and urgency of someone touched deeply by the experience of cancer with the knowledge of a skilled science writer, Ratner and Bonislawski narrate compelling case studies across a range of screening programs and different forms of cancer. They look at the science underpinning early detection and discuss the organizational and social challenges of widespread screening, a dimension that has been shown to be especially important in the COVID-19 pandemic. And they call for the government and the medical establishment to provide resources for expanding screening, especially in economically disadvantaged communities that have traditionally been underserved."--Amazon.com

Échantillon de lecture

From Chapter 1: No Way to Fight a War 
 On December 23, 1971, flanked by Christmas greenery and a set of gaudy yellow curtains, Richard Nixon stepped before some 130 scientists and legislators gathered in the White House dining room and announced the enactment of the National Cancer Act. 
 Neither the text of the bill nor the President’s remarks made any reference to a “war” on cancer, but that’s how the effort Nixon inaugurated that afternoon became known, and today we’re nearly six decades into the longest, albeit metaphorical, military engagement in United States history. 
 Which raises the question—how are we doing? 
 To be blunt, not so great. We’re fifty years in with no end in sight. 
 There are many reasons our battle against cancer has proceeded so haltingly, not the least of which is the basic fact that cancer is a devastating disease and exceedingly challenging to treat. It hasn’t helped, though, that from the very beginning we’ve fundamentally misplaced our priorities in fighting it. 
 Each year, the American Cancer Society publishes a report detailing cancer incidence and mortality trends. According to the organization’s most recent figures, the US cancer death rate peaked in 1991 and has declined since then by around 1.5 percent a year. All told, that amounts to a 32 percent drop, from 215 deaths per 100,000 people in 1991 to 146 deaths per 100,000 in 2019[i] (the last year for which data is available). 
 That’s respectable, if hardly stunning, progress. It’s been largely driven, however, by two things: a drop in smoking rates and the earlier detection of breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers. Take away those developments, and the cancer landscape looks very much like it did five decades ago. 
 A quick survey of survival statistics makes this clear. For example, from 1974 to 1985, 14 percent of patients diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer survived for five years or more[ii]. Three decades and billions of research dollars later, that figure hadn’t budged. Patients diagnosed between 2011 and 2017 (the most recent years for which data is available) still had a five-year survival of 14 percent[iii]. 
 Just 1 percent of late-stage lung cancer patients diagnosed during the 1974 to 1985 window lived five years or more. By 2011 to 2017, that number had risen, but only to 8 percent. 
 For breast cancer, the figures are 19 percent and 29 percent[iv], respectively. The story is the same for prostate cancer. Five-year survival for late-stage patients was 30 percent between 1974 and 1985. It was 31 percent during the 2011 to 2017 span[v]. 
 The converse is also true. Patients diagnosed with early-stage cancer had, and continue to have, relatively good five-year survival rates. Between 1974 and 1985, 84 percent of patients with localized colon cancer survived for five years or more. Between 2011 and 2017, 91 percent did. For breast cancer, the corresponding figures were 91 percent and 99 percent, respectively. For prostate they were 84 percent and 99 percent. For lung cancer they were 37 percent and 64 percent. 
 With a few exceptions like testicular cancer and certain leukemias and lymphomas, this pattern holds across the board and has for half a century. If you catch and treat your cancer early, your odds of survival are fairly good. If you find your cancer only after it has spread, you are probably going to die fairly soon. 
 The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), a professional organization for cancer doctors, maintains what it calls its Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale[vi], a compilation of approved cancer drugs scored according to their effectiveness. The database is divided into two sections—one for drug-cancer combinations that are potentially curative and the other for thos…