so farber wrote to him in new york. sent him an anti-folate and he began to inject -- farber began to inject children and demonstrated for one of the first times in history a remission in childhood leukemia and thereby invented chemotherapy. and that is farber's unit when he comes off his basement. .. and then i began to send out these e-mails on the list which would say if you happen to know the site called are s with leukemia in the 1940's please call me, write to me, etc., etc. i would say to myself this book is never going to get written. and then i got rejected and i thought i would take him on a vacation to my parents' house in india and someone said to me yella, the chemist, has only one biographer, a sample biography, the only biography written of yella that i know of and someone said to me yella's biography is 85-years-old but he lives three blocks away from my parents' house in india. [laughter] someone said to go talk to yella's biographer. so i go to torch yella's biographer and we talked for an hour about h

by tiberi, farber noted that the nutrition and activity were equal to his twins. for a brief month or so, robert samford and elliott sanders seemed identical again. now, like all stories this one also has an adult and the above what is more amazing than even the story itself. about ten days after the book was published i got a phone call from my editor and said you need to sit down because this is an important phone call and i was riding on my computer and i sat down and it was elliott sandler on the phone, and he had walked into a bookstore never having known about this book remembering a story of his twin who had died at 3-years-old, and people who have a copy of the booknotes that the book opens with to robert sandlin 1945 through 1948, and to those who came before and after him. and he opened the book and he lives in maine. i would have never found him. he lives in maine. he opened the book and he saw his brother's name. the brother vanished from his life at 3-years-old and moved then and went back and he told me this amazing story which is his mother, helen,

it was funny i actually started with my farber when i was probably ten years old he was a marine. who had fought in the battle of wall canal salvado and storm world war two and i heard the stories of his experiences of storming the beaches running out of supplies and. sword fighting with the japanese soldiers on the islands just for . they saw their supply ship the blown up by japanese aircraft to try to explain that feeling of of seeing their food and their source of self-defense just completely destroyed from their eyes. i was doing some research on oil spills in general off the australian coast and that that story came back to me and i thought well his ship is still there and i but the oil still on board. there nearly four thousand world work to ship wrecks in the south pacific right now and over three hundred of those are oil tankers. if no measures are taken on this these ships will collapse they will release their oil. one side oil answers them are in environment will be very difficult to remove it. the pacific's highest concentration of world war two wrecks can be found in

it would be farber for them to raise money in the private marketplace and that would have made them -hem a chance to winch it is well concluded now that -- to win. it is well concluded now this is because of a bad business plan. there are 35 states who didn't get as much money for their roads, highways and bridges, as solyndra got. that is now down the drain because they are now in bankruptcy. it is pathetic. that's what is wrong with going too far overboard on some of their approaches. there may be some serious charges brought out of that in the end. i hope not. i think there was a sincerity about it. but it is stupid. and it is again done by people who don't know what they are doing. who literally haven't worked in the private sector. and didn't do their business run down. and who basically shouldn't be running our country, i'll put it that way. >> greta: you've introduced a bill having to do with the united nations and the palestinians are attempting to of the u.n. recognize them as a state. what is your bill and why did you introduce it? >> i'm sick and tired of the u.n. doing the

i believe we would be farber off if most state as adopted a program of the equivalent of pell grants for k-12 so parents could choose where their child went to school, public, private or home school florida has a virtual school program that is worth the entire country studying as an example. >> congressman paul? >> if you care about your children you will get the federal government out of the business of educating our kids. [ applause ] >> in 1980, when the republican party ran that part of the platform was to get rid of the department of education. by the year 2000 it was eliminated and we add on to it, no child left behind. the first thing a president should do, goal set to get the government out. don't enforce this law of no child left behind it is not going to do any good, nobody likes it. there is no value it to. teachers and students don't like it there. are other things, give tax credits to the people who will opt-out if you want. >> governor perry. >> there are a lot of good ideas here. whether it is cutting back on the department of education. making those types of reduction

i believe we would be farber off if most state as adopted a program of the equivalent of pell grants k-12 so parents could choose where their child went to school, public, private or home school florida has a virtual school program that is worth the entire country studying as an example. >> congressman paul? >> if you care about your children you will get the federal government out of the business of educating our kids. [ applause ] >> in 1980, when the republican party ran that part of the platform was to get rid of the department of education. by the year 2000 it was eliminated and we add on to it, no child left behind. the first thing a president should do, goal set to get the government out. don't enforce this law of no child left behind it is not going to do any good, nobody likes it. there is no value it to. teachers and students don't like it there. are other things, give tax credits to the people who will opt-out if you want. >> governor perry. >> there are a lot of good ideas here. whether it is cutting back on the dertment of education. making those types of reductions. i h

so the book then begins with sidney farber.sidney farber when we began in 1940s, he was so-called dog directed that the case primarily they would perform autopsies. he was a pathology who specialized in children pathology and typically bodies of children who died in the hospital would be wheeled down into his basement laboratory. the laboratory was no bigger than about 12 feet prison in cuba at the bottom of one of the buildings. so that's where we are in 1948. firebird became interested in trying to find a mechanism or an understanding of the disease, which was extremely peaceful, swiftly lethal form of cancer and that was child acute leukemia and that's where our story begins. >> host: now joining us live is the author of "the emperor of all maladies." you can see the paperback edition has come out. pulitzer prize winner for 2011. siddhartha mukherjee. dr. mukherjee, what is cancer? >> guest: it's not one disease, but a whole family of diseases. these illnesses and diseases are connected is a deeper level and essentially canc