Metastasis: The Rise of the Cancer-Industrial Complex and the Horizons of Care

Join Nafis Hasan and Tayyaba Jiwani in conversation on the rise of the Cancer-Industrial Complex and how to center our efforts to combat cancer on the basis of care. Organized by Common Notions, Jamhoor, Science for the People, and Haymarket Books.

More than fifty years after the declaration of the War on Cancer, we are nowhere closer to victory. The problem lies in the way cancer is understood and the “cancer-industrial complex” that has been established to address it.

Metastasis brings the cancer-industrial complex to the fore of our understanding of what cancer is, the chronic nature of the disease, its unmistakable parallels to capitalism, its inextricable link to the neoliberal model of economic development, and its disproportionate burden on nonwhite and poor populations—and what it will really take to rid ourselves of the gravest dangers to our individual and collective well-being.

Nafis Hasan received his PhD in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology from Tufts University in 2019. He is currently an Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a labor organizer based in Philadelphia. His writings have appeared in Jacobin, Science for the People, The Trouble, and more. He serves as an editor for the radical science magazine Science for the People and South Asian left media platform Jamhoor, and is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Read more at nafishasan.com.

Tayyaba Jiwani completed her PhD in molecular biology from the University of Toronto and currently researches the political dimensions of genomics as a fellow at the University of Exeter. She is also an editor at Jamhoor, a South Asia-focused left media platform.

This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, Common Notions, Jamhoor, and Science for the People.