Azra Raza on The First Cell

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Ethics, Philosophy, Economics, Books, Science, Business, Courses, Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Interviews, Education, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2020

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Author and oncologist Azra Raza talks about her book The First Cell with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Raza argues that we have made little progress in fighting cancer over the last 50 years. The tools available to oncologists haven't changed much--the bulk of the progress that has been made has been through earlier and earlier detection rather than more effective or compassionate treatment options. Raza wants to see a different approach from the current strategy of marginal improvements on narrowly defined problems at the cellular level. Instead, she suggests an alternative approach that might better take account of the complexity of human beings and the way that cancer morphs and spreads differently across people and even within individuals. The conversation includes the challenges of dealing with dying patients, the importance of listening, and the bittersweet nature of our mortality.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.0	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast,
0:17.0	and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.0	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.0	Today is January 24, 2020, and my guest is physician, author, oncologist, and Renaissance woman,
0:39.0	Azra Raza. She's Professor, Madison, and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York.
0:45.0	Her book is the highly acclaimed, The First Cell.
0:50.0	Raza, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:52.0	Thank you so much, Russ.
0:54.0	This book is now what I expected. It's a moving and inspiring mix of the personal side of being an oncologist along with the policy issues
1:04.0	running the way we fund and do cancer research. It is a book about death and despair.
1:09.0	It's also a book about hope and life. It's beautifully written.
1:13.0	It's a powerful look at what it's like to have cancer, to work with cancer patients,
1:18.0	and probably more than anything else a book about being a human being, and all that that entails.
1:23.0	I found it to be a hard book to read and a hard book to put down.
1:27.0	Along the way, there's a lot of policy about how we currently do cancer research.
1:33.0	We're going to, I hope, get into both sides of that personal story as a practicing physician and then also the policy issues surrounding cancer research.
1:44.0	Let's start with just MDS, which is your specialty.
1:50.0	What is it? What's its relationship to leukemia and cancer generally?
1:56.0	That's a good place to begin, Russ, because my career started with this.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.