A conversation with Dr. Azra Raza

Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University

Webinar

Host: John Donvan, JRN'80

Intelligence Squared U.S host, author, and veteran network correspondent

"With the fascinating scholarship of The Emperor of All Maladies and the deeply personal experience of When Breath Becomes Air, a world-class oncologist examines the current state of cancer and its devastating impact on the individuals it affects -- including herself."

In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cellexplores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden of being her own husband's oncologist as he succumbed to leukemia. Like When Breath Becomes Air, The First Cell is no ordinary book of medicine, but a book of wisdom and grace by an author who has devoted her life to making the unbearable easier to bear.

100% of proceeds will be donated to Capital Area Food Bank initiative.

For more information about the book please see HERE.

Cosponsored by:

• Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
• MIT Club of Washington DC

Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong professor of medicine and the director of the MDS Center at Columbia University.

She started her research in Myelodisplastic Syndromes (MDS) in 1982 and moved to Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she was the Charles Arthur Weaver Professor in Oncology and Director, Division of Myeloid Diseases.

Before moving to Columbia University, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology-Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. She has published the results of her laboratory research and clinical trials in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, Cancer, Cancer Research, British Journal of Hematology, Leukemia, and Leukemia Research. 

In addition to publishing widely in basic and clinical cancer research, Dr. Raza is also the coeditor of the highly acclaimed website 3QuarksDaily.com. She lives in New York City.

John Donvan is a four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, broadcaster and debate moderator whose bestselling book, In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. He serves as host of the Intelligence Squared US, a debate series dedicated to raising the level of public discourse in America.

He graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and the Columbia School of Journalism. He and his wife, Dr. Ranit Mishori, have one son, Ben, and a daughter, Noa.