For cancer therapeutics, the mid and late 1980s were extraordinarily cruel years, mixing promise with disappointment, and resilience with despair. As physician-writer Abraham Verghese wrote, “To say this was a time of unreal787 and unparalleled confidence, bordering on conceit, in the Western medical world is to understate things. . . . When the outcome of treatment was not good, it was because the host was aged, the protoplasm frail, or the patient had presented too late—never because medical science was impotent.
