Documentary Empeoror of all maladies tonight on PBS

[Nickmark59]

Reminder tonight and tomorrow night the Ken Burns documentary Emperor of all maladies cancer is on 9pm PBS stations

[orcasres]

And Wednesday night as well.

[skypup]

This is going to be tough to watch, but I'll be watching...

[Nik Colon]

It said it's 3 parts, I'm recording all 3

[bitchslapped]

Thx for the reminder! Knew it was coming, got my days mixed up. If they're going to make something like this, I'm going to watch it. Or at least record it to watch. It also is repeated if some miss the time slot.

[DK37]

Parts may be tough to watch but if you only see one night, watch Wed's episode. It focusses on the recent/current major research breakthroughs, gave me tears of incredible hope (I saw an advanced screening).

I'm an oncology researcher (and Stage IV myself), the recent breakthroughs are not hype!

-DK

[jgall]

DK37 is being WAY TOO modest here. He's actually quoted in the film. I don't know what night yet, but he's an absolute rock-star in the research field. AND...more importantly ...because of him, I got to go to sneak preview at Lincoln Center with Ken Burns, Siddartha Mukerjee, Barak Goodman, Katie Couric, and basically the "who's who" of cancer research last week (many of them from the organization I work). It's was an incredible event, and the film is as amazing as the book.

[vickitwo]

I found the first part of the documentary very interesting and informative. I was shocked at the statistics of the odds of getting cancer in one's lifetime. I had no idea that it was that high.... 1 in 2 for men and 1 in 3 for women.

[peanut_8]

Thanks for the heads up. I've got the recorder set.

[BrianMc7]

I'm watching this. One thing that was kind of depressing was how elusive cancer is. Dr. Farber seemed to think that potential cures would come from a chemical based approached. He could still be right (and for some forms is right), but when we look at all the new promising approaches that are coming out, are they heading down a slippery 40 year path? Don't know.

Brian

[mstults]

Enjoyed the first part. To me it wasn't depressing at all. A cure rate of over 90% for childhood leukemia is something to celebrate. That is verifiable results. Granted a good percentage relapse but that is usually in early adulthood and they are treatable at that time. Looking forward to parts 2 and 3.

[Nik Colon]

DK37 is being WAY TOO modest here. He's actually quoted in the film. I don't know what night yet, but he's an absolute rock-star in the research field. AND...more importantly ...because of him, I got to go to sneak preview at Lincoln Center with Ken Burns, Siddartha Mukerjee, Barak Goodman, Katie Couric, and basically the "who's who" of cancer research last week (many of them from the organization I work). It's was an incredible event, and the film is as amazing as the book.

can I ask who DK is? I watched everything

[DK37]

I'm a medicinal chemist (the scientists that design & make the active ingredients in drugs) - I had one line of screentime in episode 3 saying that "chemists need to be eternal optimists because 99.99% of what you do fails" in the segment about a lung cancer targeted therapy I helped discover since in that case, a project was started in 2003 and a resulting molecule did not gain FDA approval until 2014 (11 years).

That practice at eternal optimism has served me well as a Stage IV cancer patient myself!

I had actually spoken quite a bit when interviewed about the Stage IV patent experience (in general) - but that ended up on the editing room floor...

-DK
(Like many, I don't use my real full name here so that I can speak openly about what we are all going through w/o Mr. Google broadcasting every little direct quote of what I write to the rest of the world)

[Sleen]

Had a party in my room when the 2nd half of ep. 3 aired. Well, as much of a party as you can have doped up on dialudid and with a chest tube hanging out of your side

Pretty cool stuff! I saw my doc a couple of times, but he didn't get any lines.

Celine

[jgall]

Hope I didn't out you too much, DK! You're a rock-star in my book and deserve tons of praise for the work you do.