Written by: Sadaf Shahzad
Posted on: February 16, 2021 | 
Dr. Azra Raza with her book,
Dr. Azra Raza is a Renaissance woman, a pre-eminent oncologist at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital doing cutting-edge research on leukemia, with a passion and understanding of Urdu literature, and famed for her musical soirees. Often seen running in Central Park, her salon is where all the intellectuals and artists of various hues collect. If she has written “The First Cell”, she has also jointly authored a book on Ghalib. She embodies the confluence of Western science and a rich cultural heritage from her parents who hailed from Lucknow, although she grew up in Karachi.
The radical in her has emerged in writing “The First Cell”, for she has challenged the received and widely accepted approach to the treatment of cancer, and in doing so, has called out the medical establishment and Big Pharma. Once cancer has metastasized, she declares the treatment a failure, despite the billions of dollars that have been spent on research to treat it.
“The First Cell” is the launch of her crusade to make a paradigm shift in the treatment and research on cancer, to detect it in its initial stage. Her advocacy is for catching the first cell through a blood test at the cellular level. Currently, the practice of imaging through mammograms, X-rays and ultrasounds to detect cancer, is already too late to rid the body of this scourge, she argues.
The Book Cover
As someone who has seen many patients and her husband die of leukemia, Dr. Raza skirts a difficult line between science and hope in her book, “The First Cell and the Human Cost of Pursuing Cancer to the Last”. In her book, she seeks to reimagine society’s conception of cancer as a disease with not just medical consequences, but also cultural, scientific and personal repercussions.
During a talk hosted by the American Pakistan Foundation, Dr. Raza spoke about her book, and her motivations to write it. The talk was moderated by the President of the foundation, Shamaila N. Chaudhary, who carefully and thoughtfully asked the speaker about what it means to face this terrible disease regularly, both as a doctor and as someone personally affected by the disease.
Dr. Raza in her Study
Dr. Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and director of the MDS Centre at Columbia University in New York. With over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts in high-profile journals, she is a leading international authority on pre-leukemia and acute leukemia. She explained that, despite working for almost 40 years as an oncologist, what propelled her to write this book was the death of her daughter’s best friend. He was a 22-year-old boy who died of an aggressive brain tumor that was detected too late, and the incident left her with a helplessness that compelled her to take action. It moved her to raise awareness and reiterate the urgency of finding new and relatively painless ways to detect and rid the world of cancer through her book.
Although the book is about scientific research, it is refreshingly personal and raw, focusing on the human aspects of cancer treatment, particularly the relationship between a doctor and patient. Dr. Raza spoke at length about patients whose lives fundamentally altered her practice and understanding of the disease. This did not just include her daughter’s best friend Andrew, but a mother of two who died just as Dr. Raza began her career, and Omar who died a painful death at the age of 38. She ended the talk on a personal note, discussing the final months of her late husband and mentor, Dr. Harvey Priesler.
Dr. Azra Raza and her husband Dr. Harvey Priesler
Both Chaudhary and Dr. Raza talked about death as a failure when human life is geared towards life and survival. A literature and poetry enthusiast, Dr. Raza sprinkled the conversation with verses from Tennyson, Ghalib and Faiz to explain how poetry can often describe the pain, loss and anguish of seeing someone close deal with, or succumb to cancer. Her book is refreshingly poetic as it pauses to ask fundamental philosophical questions which may haunt a patient living through the disease, such as one’s conception of time and the need for hope during dark days.
What was unique about the book and the talk was how Dr. Raza did not conceptualize cancer as a personal, individualistic problem. Instead, she framed it as a collective problem, in which one individual’s pain affects the whole of society. Her ability to discuss the disease in immediate and intimate terms transforms it from a clinical, uncomfortable topic to a social and health issue that can be resolved.
The talk ended with Dr. Raza emphasizing the need for technology to facilitate the early detection of cancerous cells. She briefly spoke about the think tank she founded during the pandemic that comprises the best academics and doctors. Their goal is to make testing for cancerous cells as regular and accessible as possible, like creating simple home-tests or incorporating tests in fit-bits that could detect cancer in its early stages. And she emphasized that the new technology should be affordable and accessible all over the world, to tackle cancer on a global scale.
Dr. Raza at Her Book Launch at the Asia Society Texas Center in 2020
She lamented the depersonalized and corporate state of the medical society, which prevents doctors from making connections with their patients by listening to their psychological and physical needs. She also emphasized the importance of cancer survivors to her process, who should test themselves regularly, as well as donate both money and samples to help rid the world of cancer once and for all.
Dr. Raza brought a beautifully poignant mix of vulnerability and practicality in ‘The First Cell’ as well as her talk, moving the viewers with her experiences. With her poetry, personal anecdotes, and proposals, she describes the devastation and the hope that oncologists and cancer patients control on a real-life basis. The book will be released in Pakistan soon, and Dr. Raza promised to carry out similar conversations in this country about the human cost of cancer, and the need to act immediately to cure the world of it. In the words of poet John Donne, which she quoted during the talk:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
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