A real “social phenomenon”. We would not have had the idea, let’s face it, of qualifying cancer like this, but when we look at the figures in the face, the words of Maud Gouy, co-curator of the exhibition Cancerat the Cité des sciences, are essential: with four million people affected by the disease, more than 1,000 people a day who learn that they have cancer, it becomes clear that we all know someone who has been or is struck by this evil.
It is because cancer is so frequent and so established in our societies that the Cité des sciences has decided to tackle the subject head-on, which it presents in the plural until August 8, 2023. There is indeed not just one cancer, but 200 different ones, even if breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and colorectal cancer together constitute nearly 50% of cases.
Carcinogenesis explained with wool yarn
We enter the exhibition by greeting a luminous crab, which explains to us that cancer is 500 million years old. Far from being the “disease of the century”, it dates from the arrival of the first multicellular organisms, even if it is true that the increase in life expectancy and hence in the number of elderly people increases its prevalence in society. And why a crab, by the way? Because the Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates would have compared, in the 5th century BC, the shape of cancers to that of these little critters of the seas.
The course is then divided into five spaces. In the first, we watch a cute animated film comfortably seated explaining carcinogenesis with carded wool yarn. Or how a healthy cell begins to lose control due to the mutation of a proliferation gene.
Interactive panels and color models
Color models allow in the following spaces to “look cancer in the face”, as summed up by Laurence Caunézil, the other curator, and to visualize the different mutations. You can choose on interactive panels to listen to this or that specialist tell his discipline, with great pedagogy, such as Karine Tarte, immunologist, who explains in particular how research on messenger RNA, used against Covid-19, was at the departure oriented against cancer. In another space, we follow the care pathway of three patients. What to understand all the angles of attack against cancer.
The exhibition does not forget the political aspects, on the one hand, and the emotional, on the other hand, of the disease, in particular the moment of the announcement, treated with a series of video testimonies. They tell of the feeling of being “overwhelmed”, the “hurricane” that suddenly hits, the absence of words.
40% of cancers are preventable
Between these five spaces, totems or sculptures often poetically popularize this or that information on cancer. We learn in passing that some animals like the blue whale never have cancer. Or that conversely, the Tasmanian devil is decimated by a contagious cancer, which is transmitted by bite – we remind you that cancer is not contagious in humans (it can be contagious on the other hand in dogs )!
In the end, the exhibition manages to be didactic and captivating even though we are being told about MRI, carcinoma or T lymphocytes. The two curators of the exhibition, who are not cancer specialists, succeeded in make understandable a foreign language, which suddenly becomes fluid. And to send a message: 40% of cancers are preventable, if we adopt a healthy lifestyle, with sport, vegetables, without cigarettes, alcohol or burnt foods and with little red meat, in particular.
- Cancer, from September 6, 2022 to August 8, 2023. City of Science and Industry. 30 avenue Corentin-Cariou, Paris 19th. Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and until 7 p.m. on Sunday.