Experience the Elekta Differ - Institute of Physics and Engineering in ...

confident recommendation to biomedical
engineers, and for that matter, anyone for
whom cardiac electrophysiology forms a
significant part of their working life.
Dr James Stirrup is a Clinical Research
Fellow at the Cardiac Imaging National Heart
and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London.
He is also a Cardiology Specialist Registrar at
the Wessex Deanery, UK
CARDIAC FIBRILLATION–DEFIBRILLATION:
CLINICAL AND ENGINEERING ASPECTS –
SERIES ON BIOENGINEERING AND BIOMEDICAL
ENGINEERING
Author: Max E. Valentinuzzi
Publisher: World Scientific
Volume: 6
ISBN: 978-9814293631
Pages: 304
The Emperor of All
Maladies
I loved this book which was a slight relief
as it would have been interesting to write a
review in opposition to the many people
who decided that this book was worthy of
a Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction, 2011),
the Guardian First Book Award 2011 and
shortlisted for both the Duff Cooper Prize
2011 and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.
The author, Siddhartha Mukherjee, is a
well-published cancer physician and
researcher who lives in New York. He
started researching the history of cancer
when he began his advanced training in
medical oncology in Boston, which after
about 7 years resulted in this book. The text
follows a roughly chronological path
through the history of cancer from its first
description around 2500 BC in Egypt, to
recent discoveries in the understanding of
the activation or inactivation of genes or
pathways that result in cancer. The
‘biography’ is also interspersed with the
very human stories of a few of Mukherjee’s
own patients and the successes and failures
of their cancer treatments.
The book is very well written, and in
spite of being packed with lots of
interesting facts and historical references, I
found it to be a gripping read. I
particularly liked how each theme was
developed by pulling together different
strands from different researchers,
hospitals and countries across the world.
The ‘chapters’ are introduced with a wide
variety of quotations – historical, literary,
and from contemporary media, activists,
researchers and cancer patients which gave
added interest and context to the material.
The book is predominantly plain text
but in the middle section there are eight
pages of black-and-white photos, cartoons
and drawings offering, in my opinion, a
limited and random selection of pictures of
varying significance to cancer treatment. I
did feel somewhat disappointed when the
book abruptly ended a significant distance
from the back cover. However, for the
reader who wants to delve deeper, the 70
or so pages of notes, references and
bibliography at the end of the book will be
invaluable. A comprehensive index is also
included to facilitate returning to passages
of interest.
“
The text follows a
roughly chronological path
through the history of
cancer from its first
description around 2500
BC in Egypt
”
I doubt that I will directly make use of
any knowledge gained from this book in
my future radiotherapy work, but I feel
that I am more informed about the field in
general and will have a better appreciation
of how far medicine has come (and still has
to go) in the treatment of cancer.
Specifically I found it very interesting to
see how clinical trials and randomisation
developed and learning of some of the
naming conventions for cancer drugs.
I highly recommend this book to anyone
with an interest in medical history and/or
who is working in, or close to, the field of
oncology. I found it to be highly
informative, a real page-turner and a
welcome Christmas present. As the
paperback edition is currently available on
Amazon.co.uk for a bargain price of £6.79,
I think it would be rude not to.
Mrs Jennifer Lowe is a Clinical Scientist
(Radiotherapy) currently on a career break,
Falls Church, VA, USA
THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES:
A BIOGRAPHY OF CANCER
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN-13: 978-1439107959 (US)
Format: Hardback
Pages: 592
USMAN I. LULA | SCOPE
Physics of Societal
Issues
This title is not necessarily one that jumps
off the shelf at you as a prime text for
medical physics applications, but I would
strongly urge you to at least have a browse
through it. One implication from the title is
that the content is accessible to a lay public;
however, I would suggest that the content
does require a good deal of advanced
scientific competence. The reviewed edition
was published in 2007 and although only 5
years old the implications of the Fukushima
nuclear disaster clearly play no part in the
scientific analysis. That being said, it is an
easy extrapolation of the book’s analysis to
those events in Japan. This book looks to
provide a well considered scientific
approach to many of the influences on
everyday life and there is considerable
cross-over with our profession.
The book is broadly divided into:
national security, environment and energy,
but these broad categories do not fully
convey their content. For instance, Chapter 7
discusses nuclear pollution, albeit not from a
medical standpoint; nevertheless, the
analysis is applicable for those of us who
have a professional interest in radiation
protection. Similarly, Chapter 9 discusses
electromagnetic fields and epidemiology
which continue to be very much in the
news. Other chapters such as Chapter 16 on
energy economics are reasonably considered
to be peripheral to our profession,
nonetheless the analytical approach and
important subject matters are of general
interest. In addition, there are useful
appendices and reference/bibliography lists
at the end of each chapter which, whilst
limited, certainly do provide routes for more
insight into some of the complex social
arguments discussed within the text.
As might be expected, the text is
American and allowances need to be made
for the units and also some of the content
which is American-centric, but that aside,
the text is very readable. One useful aspect
of each chapter is the inclusion of ‘problems’
and I have used many of these to discuss
aspects of general physics with my trainees
SCOPE | SEPTEMBER 2012 | 41
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