By Gwen Darien and Musa Mayer

Loaded Language

Weighing in on war and other cancer metaphors

By Gwen Darien and Musa Mayer

The most common metaphor is, of course, military, including images of battle, weapons and war.

"I view this as an all-out fight. I feel I have been invaded by an enemy," says Karen Davis, who is living with locally advanced breast cancer. She reports a sense of kinship with her son, who is serving in the Army in Iraq: "We get strength from each other. We both have to keep the fighting attitude and not let ourselves become de-motivated or depressed. I tell him, ‘If you can do it, I can do it, and if I can do it, you can do it.' I guess my thoughts are if I don't make it, it won't be for a lack of trying."

Although the language of war in conjunction with cancer has been with us for centuries, the military metaphor received its most famous boost 35 years ago, in 1971, when Richard Nixon converted a biological weapons research facility at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, into a cancer research laboratory and signed the National Cancer Act into law.

Now that we talk about cancer more openly, military metaphors can be found everywhere in our day-to-day speech on the subject.

We can barely think or talk about the experience of having or treating cancer without encountering the pervasive metaphor of war. Think of the words we and our health care providers use that evoke the battlefield: We fight for our lives. We lose our valiant battle or we win, emerging victorious by destroying or beating the enemy.

The disease itself is invasive. The weapons or armamentarium of aggressive treatments (chemical, biological and nuclear weapons) are poised to attack, and aimed at the target. We hope for magic bullets from doctors on the front lines of research. Soldiering on, cancer patients are seen as brave and courageous, even heroes.

Arthur Frank wrote in his memoir, At the Will of the Body, "People with other diseases are just plain sick; those with cancer ‘fight' it. During my heart trouble no one suggested I fight my heart, but one of the first things I was told about cancer was, ‘You have to fight.' ... But I do not believe illness should be lived as a fight."

A cancer diagnosis can leave us shocked and reeling, feeling out of control. Whether you agree that illness should be lived as a fight, for many, the sense of control and active engagement implied in waging war has an instinctive and immediate appeal, especially to those who are undergoing active treatments or have advanced disease. At a time of helplessness, it lends them power.