Why are we at 'war' with cancer and disability?

By Louise Kinross

I heard a fascinating interview with science writer Alanna Mitchell on CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright a few weeks ago.

Alanna recently wrote Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer Myths.

She and Michael note that cancer is seen by society as simultaneously “inevitable, preventable and deserved,”—which of course it can’t be, and which leads us to blame people who have cancer.

This reminded me of our religious, psychological and public-health history of blaming mothers for their children’s disabilities.

In fact, when Alanna shares her reaction to learning her 21-year-old daughter has cancer, it’s eerily similar to the one we hear mothers recount when given the news that their child has a disability.

“I was absolutely convinced that I had somehow done something wrong…I went over every moment of her childhood. What had I done, what had I failed to do...I went back to the day she was conceived, to gestation…It was so much better than it being random.”

Alanna notes that rather than acknowledge the unpredictability of cancer, “the disease has to mean something bigger than it is. It's not just a cell that's gone rogue...We write a narrative about it.”

That typically involves dropping the person, metaphorically, into battle. “…with enough pluck and positivity, you can vanquish the Goliath, and even if you don’t win, you are expected to go down fighting,” Michael notes.

Doesn’t this mirror the common storyline we read in mainstream media about a person “overcoming” their disability?

How does fighting fit in with healing?

Doesn't the war metaphor strike you as simplistic, ridiculous and often harmful to a person living with an illness or disability?