A recent online book talk with author Dr. Azra Raza provided participants with unexpected insights. Many, drawn by her poetry recitals, gained new perspectives about her professional passion as a practicing oncologist upholding the well-known principle that “prevention is better than cure”
By Regina Johnson / Sapan News
The call to make a radical change in how cancer is treated has been coming from inside the house for years. Trailblazing oncologist Dr. Azra Raza has long been calling to shift attention “from the last cell to the first cell” cancer treatment.
Last Saturday, Dr. Raza passionately reiterated this stance and her rationale for it in a conversation hosted by Readers Without Borders, an online book club initiated by Boston-based entrepreneur Ambereen Mirza. The event was organised in partnership with the Southasia Peace Action Network, sister organisation of Sapan News (yes, we are working on a new name to eliminate confusion, so watch this space).
Sapan is a volunteer-driven, global, intergenerational group that aims to support cross-border dialogue and build spaces for empathy and collaboration. Dr. Raza has endorsed the Sapan Founding Charter, as had many of those present. Readers Without Borders is among the more than 150 organisations to have done so.
Dr. Raza has devoted her life to researching Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) and leukemia, commented discussion moderator Haris Ahmed, a Chicago-based business and community leader. As Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and the Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University, New York, Dr. Raza has built “the largest tissue repository in the world, where she hopes that it will contain the secrets for unlocking this terrible disease that afflicts so many human beings,” said Ahmed. Nearly 50 people from across the globe joined the Zoom call to hear Dr. Raza’s expertise and ideas on how to change cancer treatment. Some, however, entirely oblivious to her medical background, had joined because of her acclaimed poetry recitals. With references to Ghalib – about whose work she has co-authored a book with her dear late friend, the acclaimed writer Sara Suleri — and other poets sprinkled in through the discussion she did not disappoint them.
Several participants shared stories about personal losses and struggles due to the dreaded ‘C’ word.
“I lost my wife — two days from now it’ll be nine months exactly — to pancreatic cancer, which is probably one of the worst cancers. So, I will read your book. If only to give myself more consolation,” said author and businessman Mohammed Azher Siddiqui originally from Hyderabad, India, joining from Boston.
In her opening remarks, Dr. Raza talked about coming to the U.S.A. and landing in Buffalo where her older sister, the well-known Chicago-based physician Dr. Atiya Khan then worked and to whose support she owes everything. While the siblings grew up in Pakistan, their parents were born and grew up in undivided India — father in Lucknow, and mother in Aligarh.
“Money matters,” said Dr. Raza, who has been studying and treating cancer for nearly 40 years. What she is trying to do needs not just vast resources but also people who believe in it and support her views on how and why the medical profession needs to change.
This is the premise of her innovative approach to cancer treatment, outlined in her book “The First Cell and the Human Cost of Pursuing Cancer to the Last” (Basic Books, USA, 2019).
Typically, the war on cancer begins too late in the disease process because it targets visible tumors instead of the precursors to cancer cells, explained Dr. Raza. “Stage one is visible cancer. We should be the last generation to deal with this visible disease.”
What we need, she added, is precision oncology, to prevent the disease. The idea resonates with William Shatner, who famously played Captain Kirk in the cult 1960s TV series Star Trek, and was diagnosed with stage four cancer. So was his daughter. They both read Dr. Raza’s book. That is why she had joined the discussion from Los Angeles—Shatner had interviewed her for his podcast and invited her to LA to introduce her to people who might be able to help her fulfill her mission.
Dr. Raza has many friends and admirers in high places, like Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the physician, scientist and entrepreneur who owns the Los Angeles Times and funds the endowed chair for Dr Raza at Columbia University. Another dear friend was the late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, whose groundbreaking book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) catalysed a paradigm shift in how we look at the human brain.
In her research geared towards shift focus from treating advanced cancer to detecting and eliminating early cancer cells, she has been working on a device she calls the “sentinel stent.” or the “Stentinel” which looks like a syringe.
In an “era of implanting intelligence” — a term she laughingly said she has trademarked — the Stentinel would be capable of detecting and destroying cancer cells. She and her team are working on making it available by 2028. And she emphasised, it must not become a luxury for the rich — “The stent literally costs $80,” she said.
Hearing Dr. Raza speak, it’s clear that she wants a global healthcare ecosystem where early detection and prevention is the standard — universally accessible and not limited to wealthy individuals — or nations.
Cancer, she noted, “is not one disease” and “different bodies have different responses” both to the disease and the treatment. But because we don’t always know how to treat it, the way we currently fight it is to “slash, poison, and burn.”
She views the issue through “the prism of human anguish”, having watched countless cancer patients suffer and die, including her own husband Dr. Harvey David Preisler, also an oncologist, to cancer when their daughter was just 8-years old.
Highlighting the financial and intellectual waste in current cancer research, she termed the way we currently wage war on cancer as “financial toxicity”.
There is, as Dr. Raza observed, a huge “financial incentive for the last cell strategy”. During “the last 50 years, 90-95% of cancer drugs developed have failed at a cost of about $60 billion in phase one cancer trials alone,” she pointed out, noting that Pakistan’s entire budget, she pointed out, is $32 billion.
As for the intellectual waste, young scientists are “locked into a late-stage treatment-centric model” which is where the money is, diverting talent and funding away from the early-detection research that patients need.
Throughout the 90-minute discussion, it was obvious that she cares about scientific and technical expertise. But as Haris Ahmed noted, Dr. Raza is also an “empath”.
“I have never come across a physician who doesn’t care about their patients,” she said. But everyone is different and has a different way of dealing with situations. Some doctors withdraw when there is nothing more they can do – they see it as a personal failure. As a practicising oncologist who still sees several patients a month, she has a different approach, upholding the importance of “empathy and presence” in healthcare.
To a question about whether oncologists should tell terminally ill patients and their families the truth, Dr. Raza quoted a line from Emily Dickinson’s poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
Tell the truth, she said, especially bad news about cancer, but deliver it gently and in stages with explanations so that patients can absorb it emotionally.
“Know that your presence will matter,” she said. “Just go stand by the bedside, hold the patient’s hand. That requires nothing except your presence.”
To another question about the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, Dr. Raza said that AI is essential in this field and is already streamlining routine work by drafting clinical notes and ordering tests. However, the actual power lies in analyzing the data generated by continuous biological monitoring.
In her lab, machine-learning systems are being trained on vast numbers of normal cancer cells so that, one day, AI can instantly flag a malignant cell long before a tumor forms. This, she implies, demonstrates that AI finds its best application in improving human welfare within medicine.
In the final analysis, Dr. Raza reiterated that cancer treatment must pivot from chasing the last cell to preventing the first. The science to do so already exists. What’s needed to take it forward is money and imagination.
Regina Johnson is coordinating editor, Sapan News. She has extensively reported on America’s energy policy at S&P Global. A versatile journalist specializing in feature writing across multiple beats, her articles have appeared in LATINA Style, Advisors Magazine, and Thrive Magazine. Email: regina@sapannews.com
This is a Sapan News syndicated feature available for republication with due credit https://www.sapannews.com.
Note on Southasia as one word: We use ‘Southasia’ as one word, “seeking to restore some of the historical unity of our common living space, without wishing any violence on the existing nation states” – Himal Southasian
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