THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER
By Devra Davis
Basic Books
Publication date: October 1, 2007
Contact: Angela Hayes, 212-446-5104

The war on cancer set out to find, treat, and cure a disease. Left untouched were many of the things known to cause cancer, including tobacco, the workplace, radiation, or the global environment. Proof of how the world in which we live and work affects whether we get cancer was either overlooked or suppressed. This has been no accident. The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products, and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies--a legacy that persists to this day. This is the gripping story of a major public health effort diverted and distorted for private gain.

Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.H.P., is the Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. She was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board in 1994 and also served as Scholar in Residence at the National Academey of Science. Her 2002 book WHEN SMOKE RAN LIKE WATER was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Author tour: Pittsburgh (author's home), San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, New York, Washington, DC, and Boston.