“Selling and marketing books in Italy has never been easy. The fault lies with the schools and the lack of libraries and the statistics have always been enough to make you blanch. Then there has always been that story about books being good for us, that they make us better people, and are even good for our health, a notion that publishers tend to imply even before they call in the marketing teams. In reality, reading takes time and effort and when we overdo things it leaves us blind, consumptive, scoliotic and dyspeptic, as Valerio Riva would put it.” (

Many investigators still hold out hope for immunotherapy in the treatment of certain tumours. However, tumours normally fend off attacks by the immune system. Now, however, scientists have found a way to give immune cells assistance. Investigators at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, have incorporated chemotherapy and a select form of immunotherapy to treat patients with metastatic melanoma. The preliminary results are promising as 10 of 13 patients remain alive 6–24 months after treatment despite the fact they all had a grave prognosis. Side effects of the therapy still remain a problem. Four volunteers experienced loss of skin pigmentation and one suffered inflammation in the eye—signs that the …