A lot of people that I've known
down through the years have seen my transition from cancer researcher to
author. I guess in my environment, I’m like a fish out of water. That’s a strange statement coming from
an avid fisherman, but it’s true.
I pull a bass that I’ve caught onto the bank and I can see it gasping
for air and thinking, “Where the hell am I.” I’m into catch-and-release, except if it’s a large, in
season and a tasty type of fish. I
found that writing or creating a story is almost as fun as doing cancer
research. It’s a challenge to
think of something no one else has thought about. You have to take that thought, prove it, with controls, and
sit back and wait for the response from your peers about its originality and
worth. That’s a peek into the
research world, but writing is a bit different, but the same. The originality must be there, but the
proof lies within the reader and your peers, if you have any, and your lucky
they appreciate what you do, are supportive in a different way. So here I am, a different person as far
as what I do for a living, having stories go through my head instead of how T
lymphocytes go about killing cancer cells. That’s actually not true because the first book I published
had to do with that very subject and now I’m finagling another contract with a
textbook publisher (Springer) to publish a book about how the T cell immune
system restrains the T cells responsible for killing cancer cells. Ok, I’m not completely transitioned and
still a scientist. The cancer science
books are important to me for several of reasons. One of them is the effect they may have on students and
current scientists to pursue some of the concepts I discuss in those books. The other one is that I’d like cancer
patients to read them in order to think about which treatment options would be
best for them. This has to do with
immunotherapy, which is a new and possibly life-changing kind of cancer
treatment. Anyway, I’m here now
and that’s what I do.
