Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

by Barbara Ehrenreich

In 2012 the distinguished physician and science writer Jerome Groopman wrote an entire article in the New Yorker on scientific attempts to enlist the immune system in fighting cancer without once mentioning that certain immune cells—macrophages—have a tendency to go over to the other side.7 The omission is made all the stranger by the fact that Groopman introduces his essay with a story about a young woman in 1890 whose hand injury led to a long and painful inflammation, which was followed by a fatal metastatic sarcoma. In the article, he assures us, without explanation, that the sarcoma was “unrelated to her initial injury.” By 2012, though, there had already been reports about the role of macrophages in injury-induced sarcomas.