/ Modified jul 15, 2016 4:07 p.m.

Cancer: The Emperor Of All Maladies

This three-part film tells the comprehensive story of cancer. Airing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m. on PBS 6.

cancer_emp_maladies_dr-farber_spot Dr. Sidney Farber, considered the father of modern chemotherapy, pictured at left with colleagues, c. 1950.
Executive producer Ken Burns and director Brak Goodman present a three-part series that tells the comprehensive story of cancer, from its first description in an ancient Egyptian scroll to the gleaming laboratories of modern research institutions. The six-hour film interweaves a sweeping historical narrative with intimate stories about contemporary patients, and an investigation into the latest scientific breakthroughs that may have brought us, at long last, within sight of lasting cures.

Monday, 8 p.m.
Magic Bullets

The search for a “cure” for cancer is the greatest epic in the history of science, spanning centuries and continents. This episode follows that centuries-long search, but centers on the story of Sidney Farber, who, defying conventional wisdom in the late 1940s, introduces the modern era of chemotherapy, eventually galvanizing a “war on cancer.”

Tuesday, 8 p.m.
The Blind Men and the Elephant

This episode picks up the story in the wake of the declaration of a “war on cancer” by Richard Nixon in 1971 and the search for a cure. In the lab, rapid progress is made in understanding the essential nature of the cancer cell, leading to the revolutionary discovery of the genetic basis of cancer, but few new therapies become available. Not until the late 1990s do advances in research begin to translate into more precise targeted therapies with breakthrough drugs.

Wednesday, 8 p.m.
Finding the Achilles Heel

This episode starts at a moment of optimism: Scientists believe they have cracked the mystery of the malignant cell, and the first targeted therapies have been developed. But very quickly cancer reveals new layers of complexity and a formidable array of defenses. Many call for a new focus on prevention and early detection as the most promising fronts in the war on cancer. By the second decade of the 2000s, the bewildering complexity of the cancer cell yields to a more ordered picture, revealing new vulnerabilities and avenues of attack. Perhaps most exciting is the prospect of harnessing the human immune system to defeat cancer.



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