Updated May 29th, 2023
The Cancer Code by Dr. Jason Fung: Book Summary
The Cancer Code essentially walks us through a brief history of cancer, and tries to explain why we’ve made so much progress in other areas of life…think computers, technology, iPhones, and even heart disease survival. But we really haven’t made much difference in cancer prevention and survival – until very recently. For example, Coley’s Toxins was the start of immunotherapy, but that was back in the 1890s! The 1890s!!! The Internet wasn’t even a twinkle in our world’s eyes, yet immunotherapy is still not the answer for all cancers after 130 years of refinement and discovery. We have 5G networks and you can get anything you ever want from your phone though. This is not to downplay all the great medical advances in cancer care, but compared to a lot of other areas of life, cancer sure is one frustrating biological monster!
Other shocking findings from the book:
- Most cancer deaths have gone down not from medicine, but from people quitting smoking.
- Pharmaceutical companies have more of an incentive to copy rather than innovate.
What does that second point mean?
Dr. Fung likens developing a new drug to writing a book. If you want to write a bestselling book, it is extremely difficult and financially risky. The same is said for new medicines- it’s risky and expensive for the pharmaceutical companies to launch a new drug. The way the laws work (at least in America) is that pharmaceutical companies can keep the same basic chemical formulas and add or subtract certain molecules and tweak the formula a little bit and then sell and pass it off as their own product. Dr. Fung is great with analogies, and to continue the book analogy, he says drug companies can write a new book from scratch or take a book like Harry Potter and change the name to Henry Potter, and sell that as their own product. So another reason we haven’t made much progress in cancer medicine is because the incentive for drug companies it to copy rather than innovate.
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Not all is Lost
Don’t get me wrong- the main message of the book is not that we are hopeless and there’s no way to ever cure cancer. We’ve actually made a lot of progress in cancer technology, especially in the 2000’s! Here are a few discoveries that doctors and scientists have made:
- Cancer is so hard to treat because it’s not an “external” disease like a virus, it’s a disease within our bodies.
- We have more and more proven carcinogens like H. pylori or smoking.
- Branch chain mutations make it very hard for targeted therapy- think of a tree with branches- we’d need a target to block each branch! There are 2 medicines that chop down the tree from the trunk- Herceptin and Gleevec.
- Cancer may actually be atavism – a reverse evolution back to single-celled organisms. (I don’t understand how people don’t believe in evolution!!! But I digress).
- The Seed and the Soil – Why do some people have cancer genes in their body but never develop cancer? It’s because not only do you need the gene (seed), you also need an environment that allows the cancer to grow (soil). Environment can mean literally the environment or it could mean crappy food, stress, or lifestyle. Cancer genes would be the seed, and the environment would be the soil. This was one of my biggest takeaways from the Cancer Code.
- Insulin and Cancer- There is a fascinating connection between insulin and cancer that Dr. Fung goes into detail about. All cancer patients should get their c-Peptide levels checked.
- If you have type 2 diabetes, you need to reverse it! And drink green tea! These are 2 important anti-cancer strategies! Oh, and of course, just don’t smoke in the first place.
–> Click here to check out the book <–
In Conclusion
The Cancer Code was a great book -albeit it scary and frustrating at times!- and one that may revolutionize how our society looks at and treats and cures cancer. It is backed by science (more so than Chris Beat Cancer I’d say) and if you or a loved one are suffering from cancer, read this book and talk to your oncologist/medical team about it.
How Many Stars?
5 🙂
This is a new book, and the best book about cancer that I’ve read. Read it and it may save your or your loved one’s life, and will just make you more informed about this horrible disease and how we can cure/treat it. It will give you hope that despite some shortcomings, medical technologies and advancements around cancer are now becoming more and more promising, although advancements were slower than we expected over the last few decades. But each passing day we are learning more and more about how to cure this awful disease!
Book Details one more time
Title: The Cancer Code: A Revolutionary New Understanding of a Medical Mystery
Author: Dr. Jason Fung
Publish Date: November 10, 2020
ISBN: 0062894005 | ISBN-13: 978-0062894007
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