Ken Burns tackles cancer

(Watch full episodes here... and think about whether you'd be interested in reading/discussing the book-available from amazon for about $11.)

Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee, tells the complete story of cancer, from its first description in an ancient Egyptian scroll to the gleaming laboratories of modern research institutions. At six hours, the film interweaves a sweeping historical narrative; with intimate stories about contemporary patients; and an investigation into the latest scientific breakthroughs that may have brought us, at long last, to the brink of lasting cures.

Visit Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies Website

Airs on PBS beginning Monday, March 30.

Early in Monday’s first installment of PBS’s “Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies,” a statistic about cancer’s toll in the United States is offered to convey the magnitude of the subject. “More will die from cancer over the next two years than died in combat in all the wars the United States has ever fought, combined,” the narration says.

It’s an apt comparison, because what follows, in three episodes of two hours each, is itself the story of a war that has been going on for centuries. This fight has had risk-takers, mistake-makers, heroes and casualties just like any armed conflict, but watch long enough and some specific wars might come to mind — Vietnam, for instance, or the war on terror. The battle has grown more complex as it has gone along, and clear victories have been hard to come by.

This absorbing series, directed by Barak Goodman, has as an executive producer, Ken Burns, who knows something about how to make a documentary about a war and how to make history come alive. It’s atimeline of humanity’s long effort to cure cancer, going back to the preindustrial age but concentrating on the last 75 years or so... (continues at nyt) 

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