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Patients perceive treatment to be more difficult when it is described to them using violent metaphors. [6] These metaphors can also lead to feelings of disempowerment, guilt, and fatalism. [6] One study found that the use of war metaphors in cancer public health decreased engagement in cancer prevention behaviors. [13]
Illness as Metaphor was a response to Sontag's experiences as a cancer patient, as she noticed that the cultural myths surrounding cancer negatively affected her as a patient. She finds that, a decade later, cancer is no longer swathed in secrecy and shame, but has been replaced by AIDS as the disease most demonized by society.
Her final argument was that metaphors are not useful for patients, since metaphors make patients feel as if their illness was due to their feelings, rather than lack of effective treatment. [2] The most effective way of thinking about illness would be to avoid metaphorical thinking, and to focus on only the physical components and treatment.
Many people take issue with the words “fight” and “battle” in relation to cancer, saying that it subjects patients to unfair pressure to overcome the disease.
Brian Lobel is an artist and scholar based in the United Kingdom. He is a professor of Theatre and Performance at Rose Bruford College. [1] His work has been featured at the Sydney Opera House, the National Theatre in London, and Harvard Medical School. [2]
Some cancer patients treat the loss of their hair from chemotherapy as a metonymy or metaphor for all the losses caused by the disease. [49] Some diseases are used as metaphors for social ills: "Cancer" is a common description for anything that is endemic and destructive in society, such as poverty, injustice, or racism.
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Malm, Heidi. "Military metaphors and their contribution to the problems of overdiagnosis and overtreatment in the 'war' against cancer." The American journal of bioethics 16.10 (2016): 19-21. Patterson, James T. The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture (1989) online