Book Review: The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Fiction writers publishing several dozen books in their lifetime may reflect how prolific they are and fertile their mind is. But if non-fiction writers publish several dozen books, I tend to look at them with some skepticism since individual books offer very little (i.e. low Signal-to-Noise ratio, as we say in communication engineering). On the other hand, I find well-written large books that provide comprehensive view of a given field, written by experts that worked in that field for several decades and produce just couple of books in their lifetime, so amazing and engrossing. Mukherjee's first two books, belonged to this category. The Emperor of All Maladies, and The Gene, were both excellent. He did say after writing the first book that he'd never write another book, since he had put down everything he knew about his field in his first book itself (which won him a Pulitzer). But then he found enough material to write the second one (The Gene) and couple of years back published this third book titled, The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, that delves into biological cells. I am grateful that real researchers like him (a practicing oncologist) sit down and write such books. Though I struggled with the initial couple of chapters, subsequence chapters are really well-written and so this is certainly worth a read. 

After discussing the passing of a cancer patient in the introductory chapter, book rolls back centuries & even millenniums to start from as far back as AD 129, to talk about the Roman physician Galen and his teachings about anatomy. It then quickly moves up to 16th and 17th century when investigators started looking at specimens through initial versions of microscopes to be mesmerized by the new worlds that seem to exist there. Though progress has been accelerating as each century rolled by, how much early discoverers/investigators learned & documented about cell biology is still quite impressive. As we come into the 20th century, there are large chapters/sections that view different side of biology and medicine, using the lens of a cell. The IVF section really tickled me, since the book "A Matter of Life", about the first "test tube baby" by Bob Edwards & Patrick Steptoe was one of the very early non-fiction books I read, circa 1983. I was starting to read material just to whet my curiosity (i.e. they weren't prescribed by anyone or needed for any course I was doing) and so I still remember a lot of details vividly, that were cross referenced here. 😊

Naturally, there are many sections in this book dedicated to cancer research, as it is close to the author's heart & work, while also covering many areas such as AIDS, immunotherapy, insulin generation, pandemic and even DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) techniques being tested as a way to cure serious depression. (I should note that the author's own fight with serious depression is eye opening and humbling, since it is discussed sincerely and not for scoring some brownie points.)

When I read such books, I really wish I can remember/recall all the details that I come across. While I certainly don't have eidetic memory, the section on T-cell posed quite a challenge in this regard. Since it is not really my domain, paragraphs that read as, "In contrast, a majority of peptides derived from pathogens outside the cell (and a few from the cell's interior that end up in the lysosome) are presented by class II MHCs. These are detected by a second class of T cells, called CD4 T cells." were difficult to grasp and retain. I was starting to think that Mukherjee's lucidity I enjoyed in his previous two books is missing now. But once I got past these chapters, I could see the author being back in form. Lines like "I tuned the microscope off and an inner light flickered on" (while learning about stem cell growth) are all over the book, neatly illustrating the author's capacity for good writing & metaphors (he compares antibody to a “gunslinging sheriff” and a T cell to a “gumshoe detective”, explains that bacterial protein can make precise edits to the human genome that it’s as if “it can change Verbal to Herbal in the preface to Volume 1 of ‘Samuel Pepys’ Diary’ in a college library containing 80,000 books.”). Fun reading.

Daily news is alarming & depressing these days. Anti-immigration sentiments seems to be on the rise along with polarization everywhere. In this environment, reading books like these restores your hope and confidence in humanity on the whole. How scientists do painstakingly slow work across space & time, paying no attention to national borders to push our understanding of how cells work and how they use the knowledge subsequently to design drugs & solutions to cure the humanity of its ailments is truly humbling. I wish some of the readers of this email will (or have already) read this book so that I can talk about many spectacular ideas like how neurons transmit information by both electrical and chemical means, the enormously complicated details of stem cells and so on, to get more clarity. Learning about how in 2007, a Japanese scientist named Shinya Yamanaka created stem cells from a mouse tail fibroblast should make anyone of us giddy, since it is so brilliant and reveals so many secrets that were buried deep in the annals of cell biology. I can similarly go on and on about the role of stem cells in skin wound healing (page 350), how we learned the role of pancreas and so on that are all equally engaging and amusing.   

But in addition to the complaint about some sections being harder to comprehend and retain fully, I do have couple of additional items to whine about. I often complain about books not having enough illustrations. While this book has some illustrations, the authors/editors have focused on reproducing decades & centuries old original drawings as is, in many sections. While it is exciting to see original drawings, they don't help much in conveying the knowledge well, since the old drawings are fuzzy and often confusing. I wish there were clearer, newer drawing that are easier to comprehend. Another minor nit is related to so many quotes that appear at the beginning of each chapter. One pertinent quote that matches well with the chapter's content increases the quality of writing (I did that for each chapter in this one book I have published and hoping to do the same for my second book as well). But having multiple quotes at the beginning of each chapter that are not that tightly related to the chapter contents, makes it look like the author is trying to show off and impress readers with his literary erudition, without adding much value to the discourse.

I sincerely hope all my friends who are either physicians or working in the medicine/pharma R&D will read this book so that we will have a ton of stuff to nerd out on homeostasis. 😎

Landed in India today for two weeks of vacation/work mix. Looking forward to picking up another good book, perhaps in Tamil, during this break.

Regards.

-sundar.