This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, the mysteries uncovered on the surface of a butterfly's wing. It's really some really interesting stuff. But first, nearly 270,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and a couple of thousand men too. But the disease manifests in many different ways,

meaning few patients have the same story to tell. My next guest collects many of those stories in her

book, Radical, the Science, Culture and History of Breast Cancer in America. And one of those stories

is her own. And she writes, as she writes about her own journey with

breast cancer, author Kate Pickert, details the history of breast cancer treatment as first

advised by a Scottish medical student studying sheep in the 1800s. That is a really interesting

story in the book. And hopefully we'll get to talk about it with Kate.

And she also chronicles the huge clinical trials for blockbuster drugs in the 80s and 90s, one of which required armies of people to harvest timber from the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest.

And she writes about current targeted, personalized treatments,

and the surprising East Coast, West Coast divide among breast cancer doctors, each one favoring

their own medicine.

We'll talk about all of that, and a question for you, listeners, if you or a loved one

have had breast cancer, please share what your experience was like

and what you wish you knew before you started treatment.

Kate Pickard is former staff writer at Time Magazine, a journalism professor at Loyola

Marrymount University, and the author of Radical, the Science Culture and History of Breast Cancer

in America.

We have an excerpt from

her book on our website at Science Friday.com slash radical. It's pleasure to have you on Science Friday, Kate.

Thanks a lot for having me, Ira. Tell me what's the first thing women need to know after they have been

diagnosed with breast cancer?

Oh, gosh, there is so much to learn and so little time to learn it.

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