The word alone metonymically evokes fear. To many cancer means pain, debilitating treatments, body mutilation, hair loss, the “silent killer”—the human body sabotaging itself; for many a death-row sentence lived in hospital wards. Despite intensive research into causes and treatments, cancer remains a constant threat and topic for discussion for many Americans.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, killing over 1,500 people daily.

Anyone is at risk, more so with age. Some segments of the population—such as women with a family history of breast cancer, smokers and individuals with inherited mutations—are at a higher relative risk. Over the years, work on identifying and controlling risk factors has been a primary thrust in cancer information—campaigns for breast cancer awareness have been taken up by many women’s organizations and mass media, while celebrities have sparked conversation of prostate, lung and testicular cancer among men.

Treatment options have expanded from the conventionally medical, such as surgery radiation and chemotherapy (an aggressive treatment to destroy cancer cells), to the alternative and holistic, like bodywork. The power of faith and human support during treatment has also drawn attention to the mind/body connection. Many movements have encouraged those with cancer to take charge of their own treatment through knowledge and choices among these alternatives. Recovery is declared if cancer patients are still alive five years after diagnosis, though not necessarily cancer-free.

While the vocabulary of medicine claims privileged access to the “true” description of the etiology and treatment of cancer, its intelligibility—or ability to speak to the ontology of the disease—is generated, constrained and supported within everyday language. As Sontag (1978) has argued, scientific discourse is both structured by and structuring of the metaphors of the “popular,” themselves culturally and historically contingent. As with the once incurable tuberculosis and syphilis, cancer—still largely incurable—is identified with the deepest of social dreads (corruption, rebellion, decay), and is itself a metaphor used to impose horror on other things. AIDS was once described as a “cancer” of certain populations—the perfect example of the moral role of medical discourse in social condemnation. In the US, for example, cancer is metaphorically understood as a war: we speak of an “invasion,” of mutant cells “colonizing” healthy organs and not of patients but of “survivors.” The human body as Douglas (1966) demonstrated, is the organizing metaphor for society; social ills are expressed in terms of infection and disease. “Cancer” is an aberration of the natural order, which the search for causes and for placing blame (as defiance of preventive behaviors) seeks to redress by force.