Breast Beating: A Personal Odyssey in the Quest for an Understanding of Breast Cancer, the Meaning of Life and Other Easy Questions

Michael Baum is recognised as a world authority on breast cancer and surgery. In 2007 he was awarded the St. Gallen prize, the most prestigious award worldwide for breast cancer research. This book is the story of his life, his work and his mission. Part autobiography, part anti-establishment polemic, part scientific empirical dialogue, Breast Beating recounts the story of Michael's extraordinarily gifted family, his attachment and adherence to the Jewish faith, and on a wider scale his profound love for human kind. He propounds his appreciation for the arts, music and the finer things of life. Michael is a man of science and medicine. Having qualified as a surgeon and reached the top of his profession, his career path also led him into battle against breast cancer wherein with colleagues he developed a number of clinical trials that changed the way breast cancer patients were treated. His research, operations and knowledge have contributed to the improvement in care for cancer sufferers worldwide, and have saved many lives. In his career he has not been afraid to challenge the accepted norm, to ask difficult questions, to sometimes change his own thinking based on the evidence of others, and thus to invite controversy. Michael's steadfastly scientific way of thinking with his knowledge firmly grounded in fact and not hypothesis has recently led him into confrontation with Prince Charles and other proponents of homeopathy and alternative medicine. In this book he explains just how and why he holds such strong opinions and beliefs both from a professional and personal point of view.

Michael Baum past President of the British Oncology Association and the European Breast cancer conference, has been awarded the William McGuire prize at San Antonio Texas, the Charles Gross prize in France, the St Gallen prize in Switzerland and the gold medal of the International College of Surgeons for his research into the treatment of breast cancer. He was one of the first to challenge the doctrine of radical mastectomy, lead the first trial that demonstrated the potential of tamoxifen to prolong life amongst breast cancer victims and was also the first to describe psychometric instruments to measure quality of life in cancer sufferers. He has also pioneered a revolutionary technique of intra-operative radiotherapy to replace 6 weeks of outpatient treatment with 30 minutes in the OR. Baum has a large and loud extended family, and when not finding the cure for cancer, is in his studio painting whilst musing on the meaning of life. His official title is Professor Emeritus of Surgery and visiting Prof. of Medical Humanities, University College London, but his friends call him Mike and his 9 grandchildren call him Papa Mike. Fortunately his wife Judy is always at hand to keep his feet firmly grounded.

Michael Baum remains a refreshing voice of reason and compassion. His Knowledge of breast cancer is second to none, his willingness to abandon old nostrums in the face of new research is commendable, and his determination,-almost enthusiasm,---to reject his own ideas when new facts point to new ones is sign of real scientific greatness. Unlike in politics where U-turns are disparaged, in medicine following the evidence is the essence of good patient care. This is a man who believed, as did all mainstream oncolgists, that cancer spreads through the lymphatic system. Yet he has been in the vanguard of those who now suspect it spreads through blood. The difference is by no means arcane; it calls for a fundamental reassessment of cancer treatment. Professor Baum is brave. He has long warned about, "the flight from rational thinking," posed by the recycled fashion for alternative medicine lobby. But he is also prepared to take on his own colleagues. He was one of the first to champion cancer screening and then, as inconvenient data emerged, he became one of its most vocal critics, much to the annoyance of many fellow doctors and of the powerful screening lobby groups he himself had helped to create. This book, as he puts it himself, is really about, "how false assumptions about the nature of breast cancer gave rise to cruel and futile interventions that added to the sum of human suffering." But, above all, it is a book about human nobility and hope.