my daily coffee

[On science writing]:

“So I invented rules, such as you won’t go through two chapters without meeting a real human character. How does one write the history of the epidemiology of cigarette smoking, for example – which is so abstract, and a story we all know superficially – how can one write that as if it’s a discovery, so that you feel it’s a discovery?
[…]
He has that impenetrable sheen of the Ivy League star – effortlessly sophisticated and erudite, but ultimately rather unknowable – but his aversion to medical dogma is clear.
[…]
You might have a chronic remitting relapsing cancer and imagine it’s remitting because you’re drinking apple juice. But I don’t think it’s true. I think you’re having a chronic remitting relapsing cancer – and that’s the nature of your cancer.

“Maybe there are miracle substances out there that change the behaviour of particular cancers,” he adds diplomatically. “But history suggests to us that we have to be sceptics here. If it was so simple then it would have been solved a long time ago.”