But what if the whole of cancer could be uprooted at its earliest stage using the most definitive surgery conceivable? What if cancer, incurable by means of conventional local surgery, could be cured by a radical, aggressive operation that would dig out its roots so completely, so exhaustively, that no possible trace was left behind? In an era captivated by the potency and creativity of surgeons, the idea of a surgeon’s knife extracting cancer by its roots was imbued with promise and wonder. It would land on the already brittle and combustible world of oncology like a firecracker thrown into
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