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In 1950, a diagnosis of cancer was all but a death sentence. Mortality rates only got worse, and as late as 1986, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine lamented: "We are losing the war against cancer." Cancer is one of humankind's oldest and most persistent enemies; it has been called the existential disease.But we are now entering a new, and more positive, phase in this long campaign. While cancer has not been cured - and a cure may elude us for a long time yet - there has been a revolution in our understanding of its nature. Years of brilliant science have revealed how this individualistic disease seizes control of the foundations of life - our genes - and produces guerrilla cells that can attack and elude treatments. Armed with those insights, scientists have been developing more effective weapons and producing better outcomes for patients.