Breast Cancer Discovery

I saw someone share a picture of a letter from The Guardian, and I’ve thought about it a lot recently.

Michael Baum, a clinical scientist, went to see Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia in 1993.

In the interval, he had what he calls a Damascene conversion (a sudden, dramatic, life-altering change in beliefs)

He’d been trying to understand breast cancer behaviour, and the assumption was that it grew in a linear trajectory, spitting off metastases as it went.

Then a character in the play asked her tutor, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell. And if a bluebell, why not a rose.

That’s Stoppard explaining chaos theory.

Baum realised then that cancer doesn’t work linearly. By the time you diagnose it, cancer cells have already scattered into the circulation and nested in distant organs. And this insight became the foundation for systemic chemotherapy.

Stoppard never really knew how many lives he saved by writing a play.

What’s interesting is that Baum wasn’t at a medical conference. He wasn’t reading the latest oncology journal. He was watching a play about a teenage girl, her tutor and some equations about roses.

Most coaches assume learning should be adjacent to their work, which creates a closed intellectual loop.

More certifications, more training, coaching methodologies, more information which is all useful but it’s not really original.

Sam Tatem wrote a book called Evolutionary Ideas and his core argument was that we think we need revolutionary new answers but most progress comes from adapting old solutions to new contexts by looking sideways.

If you want better coaching and a stronger business you need inputs that change your models and how you fundamentally think about things.

That means reading books outside of your interests, watching YouTube outside of your typical field and taking time to try and learn from everything.