In the mid-19th century, a pioneering German pathologist, Rudolf Virchow, identified one feature of cancers: that they represent an uncontrolled proliferation of cells.

"Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own," Mukherjee writes.

She was joined by four other cancer patients, by professional organizations of pathologists with more than 100, 000 members and by several individual pathologists and genetic researchers.