Debraj Mukherjee Quotes

The trial designed to bring the most rigorous statistical analysis to the cause of lung cancer barely required elementary mathematics to prove its point. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Peace comes to those who let others live in peace. ~ Indira Mukherjee

Second, proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes typically lie at the hubs of cellular signaling pathways. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The moral and medical lessons from this story are even more relevant today. Medicine is in the midst of a vast reorganization of fundamental principles. Most of our models of illness are hybrid models; past knowledge is mishmashed with present knowledge. These hybrid models produce the illusion of a systematic understanding of a disease - but the understanding is, in fact, incomplete. Everything seems to work spectacularly, until one planet begins to move backward on the horizon. We have invented many rules to understand normalcy - but we still lack a deeper, more unified understanding of physiology and pathology. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Boro-babu, the world does not change, you destroy yourself trying to change it, but it remains as it is. The world is very big, and we are very small. Why cause people who love you to go through such misery because of it? ~ Neel Mukherjee

Battles are won one by one and enemy battalions are destroyed one at a time. Factories are built one at a time. Farmers cultivate one plot after another. We serve ourselves the total amount of food we can consume, but we eat it spoonful by spoonful; to eat it in one go would be impossible.This is known as the piecemeal solution. ~ Neel Mukherjee

I can see the Milky Way. It's like the smudge of a cosmic giant's fingerprints on the inky black sky. And stars - so many millions and millions of them that, if I let my eyes unfocus for a bit, they too become a smear in the sky. ~ Neel Mukherjee

It was Disney World fused with Cancerland. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. - Sun Tzu ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

If something is good, more is not necessarily better. Not always. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

I could write a thesis on the physiology of vision. But I had no way to look through the fabric of confabulation spun by a man with severe lung disease who was prescribed 'home oxygen', but gave a false address out of embarrassment because he had no 'home.' ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

I am aware of myself as a four-hundred-year-old woman, born in the captivity of a colonial, pre-industrial oral culture and living now as a contemporary New Yorker. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind of frightening and decaying quality was very interesting to me, and it seemed that one could explore the idea that every age defined its own illness. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Dullness is a kind of luxury. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

God is in no hurry, so why should I be?"), Griffith ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The history is important because science is a discipline deeply immersed in history. In other words, every time you perform an experiment in science or in medicine, what you're actually doing is you're answering someone, answering a question raised by someone in the past. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

You're eating like a sparrow nowadays. You've hardly touched your food.' 'You give me so much. There are so many dishes.' 'Where so many? One dal, one fry, one vegetable dish, a bit of fish, that's it.' 'And you don't think that's a lot?' 'You've eaten like this all your life,' she said, baffled. 'Don't you agree we eat too much?' 'Who, you and I?' she asked, still puzzled. 'No, no, by "we" I mean all of us, everyone in our social and economic class. ~ Neel Mukherjee

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire? ~ Bharati Mukherjee

It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

We are all equal children before our mother; and India asks each one of us, in whatsoever role we play in the complex drama of nation-building, to do our duty with integrity, commitment and unflinching loyalty to the values enshrined in our Constitution. ~ Pranab Mukherjee

One does not find soulmates.. soulmates 'happen' unannounced in some turn of this deliciously unpredictable journey called life, often when we are not even 'groomed for the occasion ~ Sourabh Mukherjee

I have seen vast, perhaps unbelievable, changes during the journey that has brought me from the flicker of a lamp in a small Bengal village to the chandeliers of Delhi. ~ Pranab Mukherjee

I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

But the pigs--seventy pounds of porcine weight that did not take kindly to weekly endoscopies--did not sprout any ulcers. And testing the theory on humans was ethically impossible: how could one justify infecting a human with a new, uncharacterized species of bacteria to prove that it caused gastritis and predisposed to cancer?
In July 1984, with his experiments stalled and his grant applications in jeopardy, Marshall performed the ultimate experiment: "On the morning of the experiment, I omitted my breakfast….Two hours later, Neil Noakes scraped a heavily inoculated 4 day culture plate of Helicobacter and dispersed the bacteria in alkaline peptone water (a kind of meat broth used to keep bacteria alive). I fasted until 10 am when Neil handed me a 200 ml beaker about one quarter full of the cloudy brown liquid. I drank it down in one gulp then fasted for the rest of the day. A few stomach gurgles occurred. Was it the bacteria or was I just hungry? ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

In the early 1950s, Fanny Rosenow, a breast cancer survivor and cancer advocate, called the New York Times to post an advertisement for a support group for women with breast cancer. Rosenow was put through, puzzlingly, to the society editor of the newspaper. When she asked about placing her announcement, a long pause followed. "I'm sorry, Ms. Rosenow, but the Times cannot publish the word breast or the word cancer in its pages. "Perhaps," the editor continued, "you could say there will be a meeting about diseases of the chest wall." Rosenow ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Leukemia was a malignant proliferation of white cells in the blood. It was cancer in a molten, liquid form. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Most of the selected essays share a common thread: They describe how science happens. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population - we aren't dying of other things, so we're dying of cancer. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Numbers never lie; one can make them, of course, as one can make anything speak another story in another tongue, but they do not have the inherent falsehood that words carry. ~ Neel Mukherjee

Natures and features last until the grave ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Is there something I can do to kill the cancer germ? Can the rooms be fumigated ... ? Should I give up my lease and move out? ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Our encounter with cancer has rounded us off; it has smoothed and polished us like river rocks. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

In other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

That more than 90 per cent of the Indian population should continue to be illiterate even after 175 years of British rule in this country is an intolerable situation which calls for immediate action. ~ Syama Prasad Mukherjee

I personally believe that the office of the President of India is not to be sought. It is to be offered. ~ Pranab Mukherjee

Our ability to read out this sequence of our own genome has the makings of a philosophical paradox. Can an intelligent being comprehend the instructions to make itself? - John Sulston Scholars ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Nécessité absolue trouver origine de cet emmerdement [It is absolutely necessary to find the origin of this pain in the ass]. - Jacques Monod ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

This was yet another colonial fascination: to create the conditions of misery in a population, then subject it to social or medical experimentation. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science research was staggering. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

You spent all this money to save mice the problem of developing tumors? Exchanges ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

History repeats, but science reverberates. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

It's always good to get good reviews. I read my reviews. There are a lot of writers who don't read their reviews at all. I read them; then I put them away because it's not good to engage with them too much. ~ Neel Mukherjee

I'm human, we all are - all doctors are - and grieving is a natural part of medicine. As a doctor, grieving is a natural part of medicine. If you deny that, again, you'd get into this trap of curing and victory. I think grief is very important. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

In 2004, a rash of early scientific reports suggested that cell phones, which produce radio frequency energy, might cause a fatal form of brain cancer called a glioma. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Some cancers are curable, while others are highly incurable. The spectrum is enormous. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is a highly incurable disease, whereas some leukemia forms are very curable. There is a big difference between one form and another. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee