As often happens in Woods Hole, the seemingly ordinary people we meet on the street or in the audience of a lecture or a concert, or even at the boat launching ramp, turn out to be famous experts in their field. David Scadden, a Woods Hole summer resident, epitomizes this type of person. Though he may not be an expert in boat handling, he certainly is a mover and shaker in his professional life. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He is not only a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University, he is also the Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Chief of Hematologic Malignancies at the MGH Cancer Center. In addition to all this, Dr. Scadden is an author of a new book about cancer, Cancerland, a Medical Memoir, which is easily understandable by the general public. He will speak at the Woods Hole Public Library on Saturday, January 26 at 3:30 about his book.
As a testimony to this man’s empathy, and the clarity of his writing, the Wall Street Journal has said “For all the insight he offers into the hard science and thorny logistics of studying cancer, Dr. Scadden’s most moving passages consider the effect of the disease on the people who suffer from it and those who care for them.” His book takes us through the uncertainty, the pain and heartache, and the triumph of caring for cancer patients. He also shows us the hard work, the frustrations, and the joys of searching for a cure for cancer.
A reviewer for libraries has written “Dr. Scadden is an oncologist with several discoveries about cancer treatment under his belt. He is … one of the world’s leading experts on immunology as it applies to oncology. He, like most of us, has also encountered cancer up close and personal, in his own friends and family. And he’s treated numerous patients in his career. He tells us of his history of cancer care and research. It’s been a long, hard trail to get to effective treatments. Cancer, it seems, is not one disease but many, many different diseases, so there will never be a magic bullet that ‘cures cancer’. But stem cell research is finding cures for a number of cancers. Reading the history of this research was fascinating. A really good book that I’d recommend to anyone interested in medical history or touched by cancer.”
As another professor of medicine has said “This book will give you hope.”
This event is free and open to the public.