In our inaugural edition, our writer puts the gods of medicine to the test. Not just any gods, these are the ones that had to face Indian parents memes treatment from their fathers decades ago. That’s right, presenting “The Top 5 Most Awesome International Doctors.. Of Indian Origin”. Some of them have donned the hallowed halls of Stanford and Oxford, and some of them would have ended up supporting CSK, if they hadn’t taken the opportunity to excel in their fields of interest abroad. Some of the more obvious choices are people you keep as imaginary idols along with your hopes and dreams, and some would present as a surprise. Tune in shortly to see who’s made the Hi-Five list, and who we’ve put to the test.
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee
In the 5th century B.C, Hippocrates named the disease entity of cancer after the crab owing to its tendency to reach out and spread through the entire body. Just like the disease it discusses, the popularity of Dr. Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “The Emperor of All Maladies” can aptly be described to be spreading at a metastatic rate among medicos and the public alike.
An oncologist by profession, Mukherjee shares his deep understanding and years of experience dealing with cancer through his book (which was selected for Time Magazine’s 100 greatest works of non-fiction, and Oprah’s top 10 books of 2010 for those who consider Oprah as the ultimate authority on… well… everything.) This can be highlighted in a 
statement by Mukherjee – “I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche?”
Presently working to identify the prime issues behind hematopoietic cancers at Columbia University, Mukherjee stands as a key public figure on the fight against cancer just as Mary Lasker was in the 1950’s, as described in a chapter of his book. In 2012, Dr. Mukherjee wrote an article for Newsweek magazine titled “I’m Sorry Steve Jobs: We Could Have Saved You”, which was a fantastic blend of the sorrow the world felt at the time and the current breakthroughs in modern cancer research.
Cancer has presented itself as one of the most twisted paradoxes of modern times. Our efforts to better understand disease and combat infections over the past 4 centuries have resulted in an overall increased life expectancy, which has provided the soil for cancer to spread across all barriers. It takes men like Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee to take the crab out of its shell and provide hope for the fearful public.
“In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son’s baseball team.” – The Emperor of All Maladies
PS: Be sure not to miss out on the chapter discussing the story of how they discovered that smoking led to lung cancer, it’s a story of true human triumph.
