From the acclaimed author of When Smoke Ran Like Water, a searing and revelatory account of how the War on Cancer has been distorted by economic interests. Even before its official launch more than three decades ago, the War on Cancer was fighting many of the wrong battles, with the wrong weapons and the wrong leaders. Little has changed since. Conceived in explicitly military terms, the campaign against cancer has always been about defeating an existing enemy - detecting, treating and curing the disease. The campaign has hardly addressed the basic causes of the disease such as tobacco, the workplace of the general environment; proof that the world in which we live and work has a lot to do with whether we get cancer was either overlooked or suppressed, often by people who had a major economic interest in making this happen. This has been no accident. The War on Cancer has been directed, from the beginning, by leaders who came from industries that generated a host of cancer-causing materials and products, or who controlled firms that profited directly from cancer treatment. Their economic interests lay in making the disease less deadly, but never in preventing its occurrence. The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows, decade by decade, how this leadership acted to prevent research on prevention from ever being done - or, once done, from ever gaining widespread circulation or affecting either medical practice or government policy. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, this is the story of a major public health effort diverted and distorted for private gain.