Cancer as a metaphor

Over 10 years ago, The Oncologist published an article on cancer as a metaphor. 

We often talk to patients about fighting their cancer and winning the war, and that is often how we think about oncology. We invoke military imagery to help us describe the ordeal our patients go through.

With all due respect to the journal editors, it seems to me that this was a bit backwards. I think the more correct phrasing is that we use fighting a war as a metaphor for the treatment of cancer.

 

We have inundated our language with bellicose metaphors. Take, for instance, the language of immunology: lymphocytes are “deployed” or “mobilized,” the protagonists are “killer” cells and the images are all of “battles” for supremacy and survival. Clinicians talk about a “therapeutic armamentarium,” and I am sure many of us tell our patients that we know of a new “magic bullet.”

In the next paragraph, the article goes on to say

 

The fact is that Richard Nixon and Ted Kennedy started to talk about the war on cancer in the 1970s, and we have had updates ever since.

At the end of 1971, President Nixon signed into law the National Cancer Act, one of the highlights of his otherwise dark legacy:

National Cancer Act of 1971

The National Cancer Institute was established in its current form by the National Cancer Act of 1971, signed into law by President Richard Nixon. This legislation was an amendment to the Public Health Service Act of 1944 and represented the US commitment to what President Nixon described as the “war on cancer,” which had become the nation’s second leading cause of death by 1970.

Admittedly we are still some way from achieving the lofty goals included in the 1971 legislation, but we have certainly made significant progress.

While I may have occasionally slipped into battle language in over 8 years of writing this blog, I have to admit I have never been especially fond of its use. If I am fighting a war, who exactly is the enemy? I can only see two possibilities. The first is that we are our own worst enemies in that our unhealthy lifestyles have contributed to our disease. That explanation is simply a guilt with which no one receiving a cancer diagnosis would care to live. The second is that cancer is caused by some Divine Being. That explanation would seem to fly in the face of everything we are supposed to believe about religion and its role in our lives. Perhaps it is the statistician in me, but I just look at this as a largely random outcome of being a human being, nothing more, nothing less.

I have thought of this often during these past eight years, but I was reminded of it yesterday when I heard United States Senator Mitch McConnell say that “loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.” While war may not be an appropriate metaphor for cancer, perhaps cancer is an appropriate metaphor for the war currently raging in this country. Ridding our body politic of this “disease” will require significant effort to reduce the anger that has come to dominate our lives and allow that “cancer” to flourish.

Are we up to the task?

Love,                                           

Rebecca