A simple lab test that could customize chemotherapy to the patient and save lives. Surely such a breakthrough would be hustled into widespread use? Not in "A Test of Survival," and not in the real-life story that inspired it.

Money is certainly at stake, as is status, power, loyalty to petrified ideas, and the fate of half a million people dying of cancer every year.

Dr. Gus Ephraim toils for decades at the fringes of cancer research, stubbornly awaiting validation of his tumor test. He risks his marriage and more when he sets up a new lab in the Midwest, too close to wife number one...