Early Detection: How America Can Win the War on Cancer

Catching cancer early remains the single best approach to fighting this deadly disease, the second-leading killer both in the US and worldwide. Yet, we too often fail to do so, even when we have the tools that we need. Early Detection looks at where we are falling short in our cancer screening efforts and how we should be investing our time and money both to improve existing early detection procedures and to bring forward new ones. The book is a guide to the science of early detection-what works, what doesn't, and why-as well as a call for government and the medical and scientific establishment to put badly needed resources toward optimizing and expanding cancer screening.

Early Detection explores cancer screening systematically, examining the subject from the level of individual tests all the way up to the roles and incentives of large healthcare systems and the federal government. It looks not only at the scientific challenges involved but also the social and organizational challenges, an angle that has been traditionally under-covered but is especially relevant in light of our struggles with these same problems throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early Detection also highlights to the disparities of race and economic class that affect access to early screening. Though this problem exists throughout our medical system overall, when it comes to early detection, the problem becomes far-reaching from both an ethical as well as an economic point of view.

In teaming together, Bruce Ratner and Adam Bonislawski combine the passions of someone touched deeply by the experience of cancer and a desire to call attention to life-saving techniques. They tackle subject with a combination of breadth and granularity, exploring why early detection has not been given the level of priority it deserves, and the ways it can dramatically reduce cancer deaths in this country.