About This Video

In the 1940s a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia was a death sentence. But since then, steady progress in treatments have been increasing the survival rates for all forms of cancer. Just how far we’ve come in a matter of decades will astonish you. Every year, Siddhartha Mukherjee, a researcher, physician, and author, steps out of the lab and outpatient environs to spend a month in the cancer wards, home of some of the disease’s most hopeless cases. The humanizing experience allows him to see the field’s hard-fought progress with his own eyes. He never knows when his most dire patients will slip into the ever-increasing percentage of survivors, and it is this uncertainty that drives him to search for a cure and practice medicine.
More from this series: Cancer’s Last Stand

Recorded June 2011; Posted October 2011