Laws of Medicine

Dr. Mukherjee, a celebrated cancer research doctor and author of The Gene and The Emperor of All Maladies, takes the reader on a soulful journey to discover the essence of his profession.

The Laws of Medicine follows Pulitzer-Prize-winning author, Dr Mukherjee as he investigates some of the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career - the cases that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine. As a young medical student, Mukherjee discovered The Youngest Science, a book that changed the way he understood the medical profession and forced him to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a ''science''? Science must have laws - statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. Dr Mukherjee has spent his career pondering whether the ''youngest science'' has laws like the other sciences, culminating in this treatise The Laws of Medicine. Law 1: Rumours are more important than tests. Law 2: The piece of data that does not fit your model is the most crucial piece of data that you own. Law 3: For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias. Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this book is a glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments rarely seen by those outside the profession.

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Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. His book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, Harvard Medical School. He has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters.