David Agus

Author of NY TIMES #1 Bestseller, THE END OF ILLNESS  

Can we live robustly until our last breath? Do we have to suffer from debilitating conditions and sickness? Is it possible to add more vibrant years to our lives? And has the time come for us to stop thinking about disease as something the body "gets" or "has" but rather to think of it as something the body does?

In The End of Illness, David B. Agus, MD, one of the world's leading cancer doctors, researchers, medical futurists and technology innovators, tackles these fundamental questions, challenging long-held wisdoms and dismantling misperceptions about what "health" means. With a blend of storytelling, landmark research, and provocative ideas, Dr. Agus presents an eye-opening picture of the complex and endlessly enigmatic human body, and all of the ways it works-and fails-ultimately showing us how a new perspective on our individual health will allow each of us to achieve that often elusive but now reachable goal of a long, healthy life.

Dr. Agus also offers insights and access to breathtaking and powerful new technologies that promise to transform medicine in our generation. In the course of offering recommendations, he emphasizes his belief that there is no "right" answer, no master guide that's "one size fits all." Each one of us must get to know our bodies in uniquely personal ways, and he shows us exactly how to do that so that we can individually create a plan to live longer. This groundbreaking approach will change not only how we care for ourselves but also how we develop the next generation of treatments and cures.

Over the past twenty years, Dr. Agus has received acclaim for his innovations in medicine and contributions to new technologies that will change how all of us maintain our health. He's also built a reputation for having a unique way of looking at the relationship of the body to health and disease. He explains, "Sometimes you have to go to war to understand peace. My work in the cancer war has taught me a lot about all things health-related, much of which goes against conventional wisdom."

Dr. Agus is professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and the Viterbi School of Engineering and heads USC's Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. He received his bachelor's degree from Princeton and his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He trained at Johns Hopkins and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A staunch advocate for personalized medicine, he chairs the Global Agenda Council on Genetics for the World Economic Forum, and is co-founder of Applied Proteomics and Navigenics, two health-care technology and wellness companies.

Dr. Agus's honors and awards include the American Cancer Society Physician Research Award, a Clinical Scholar Award from the Sloan-Kettering Institute, and the 2009 Geoffrey Beene Foundation's Rock Stars of Science Award.