An Ounce of Prevention

As cancer hospitals focus on initiatives to enable healthier populations and eradicate the disease, they must navigate roadblocks along the way

- ALEXIS KAYSER

WHEN DOCTORS FOUND A TUMOR ON MICHAEL Ratner's brain, his brother Bruce clung to hope.

Despite the sensitive location of the growth, Bruce Ratner had something few families do upon receiving a cancer diagnosis: He had access.

Bruce Ratner, a real estate developer and New York City's former commissioner of consumer affairs, sat on the boards of Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He was personally connected to some of the world's best cancer specialists and most cutting-edge therapies.

Michael Ratner's prognosis was uncertain, but his options were promising.

Even after his surgeon discovered a second, inoperable malignancy-the result of a primary tumor that was spreading but couldn't be located—the Ratners had options. They called upon Memorial Sloan Kettering's chief physician, who was working on a groundbreaking genetic sequencing project and prescribed a medication to precisely target the mutated cells.

Michael Ratner was getting better, spending time with family and even working on a memoir about his career as a constitutional rights litigator. But when he contracted a dangerous infection, his body was too weakened by the treatments to fight it off. He died at age 72, eight months after his diagnosis.

Now, more than eight years later, Bruce Ratner is the founder of the Michael D. Ratner Center for Early Detection of Cancer and co-author of the 2024 book Early Detection: Catching Cancer When It's Curable. Bruce Ratner's position gave his brother access to "the most thorough and thoughtful care possible," he writes in Early Detection. It wasn't too little; just too late.