I believed it had to go a better way

How to cross the boundaries of the impossible? And why are we the world leader in the treatment of childhood leukemia?

The book interview by writer Petra Dvořáková with Professor Jan Starý addresses the most important moments of his life — from studying medicine to fateful meetings to key decisions that led to fundamental changes in the treatment of childhood leukemia in our country.

The author maps the individual steps of Jan Starý, which in the mid-1980s culminated in the first therapeutic successes, when up to sixty percent of children overcame leukemia. It stops at the fascinating story of the first child bone marrow transplant, which Professor Starý performed on the day of the general strike in 1989. Through the prism of her own experience with childhood cancer, the author looks back to the present day, when the success rate of treatment for children with leukemia is almost ninety percent and, thanks to the work of Jan Starý and his colleagues, we have become a world leader in the field. The narration of this doctor' s life story is imbued with his humanity, kindness, and deep empathy for every person.

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I realized again how Jan Starý' s incredible work and personal commitment, his daily efforts driven by sometimes seemingly unattainable hopes, managed to change the fates of so many sick children.
— Petra Dvořáková

I belong to that lucky generation of doctors who have experienced incredible progress in their field, something they could not have imagined at the beginning. When I started, almost all children died of leukemia, today almost all survive. I consider this a great blessing, because this doesn' t happen to every doctor.
— John the Old