chemotherapy and immunotherapy. In traditional chemotherapy, toxins that destroyed fast-dividing cells got dumped into the body, ideally killing, say, a lung tumor, but taking out lots of healthy tissue as well. This was the proverbial war of attrition. The Festival of Life had to outlive the tumor and the treatment. With nivolumab or ipilimumab, as you’ll see, the idea is to use molecular tinkering to unleash the immune system to attack cancer—using the body’s natural defenses—rather than injecting bleach into the body and killing everything that moves.
