How Smart is Cancer? Some Thoughts

I got a Google alert yesterday for a news release from The University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. The title of the release is "Blood Cancer is Smart. Research is Smarter."

I was very curious about where this was going. It turned out to be a fairly standard news release from a university, discussing the research that some of its professors are doing (in this case, some of its blood cancer specialists). It's good stuff that they're doing there.

What really caught my eye, though, was the idea that cancer is "smart." I have some mixed feelings about that.

I'm certainly guilty of anthropomorphizing cancer -- talking about it like it's a person instead of a general name for a whole bunch of diseases. Sometimes it's easier to explain things to people if we treat cancer as a thing with a brain that can make its own decisions and take action to grow on its own and do things to evade treatment. I use a whole lot of comparisons when I write the blog. I think they're helpful (I certainly hope so). But I also know that comparisons have their own set of implications.

And it's not just me who does it. Sometimes we explain things to ourselves in ways that make it easier (or harder) to deal with being a patient. I wrote a piece a while ago where I talk about how it feels to have a slow-growing blood cancer. I compared it to being in a bar, seeing someone else who is staring at you, knowing that the other person is looking for a fight.

Making cancer into something recognizable can make it easier to deal with. Calling ourselves "warriors" makes it easier to feel like we're doing something other than watching and waiting. Thinking of cancer as something "smart" makes us feel like doctors might be smarter and can get us out of this mess.

I remember, many years ago when I was first diagnosed, writing in the blog about cancer humor. I still find jokes about cancer very funny (if they're good jokes, of course). You can probably find the blog post easily enough if you search. But I remember saying something along the lines of, I'll never stop laughing, because I  don't want to give cancer the satisfaction of making me sad.

At the same time, reading that title, it felt to me like it was giving cancer too much power. Is cancer "smart"? No. Because it can't make decisions. It can't target us. It can't problem-solve when it is confronted with a new treatment.

And I'm not sure treatments are "smart" in that way, either. I understand why they're called that. Compared to the very "stupid" chemotherapy, which kills whatever it comes across, newer treatments are "smart" in that they do a much, much better job of finding and killing cancer cells, rather than healthy cells. (Though they don't spare all healthy cells.)

And looking at the article, the doctors who are interviewed never call cancer or cancer research "smart." It's a clever headline.It certainly caught my attention.

But for me, it was a good opportunity to think some more about the language we use to talk about cancer, and the ways that our words shape our attitudes, and maybe our actions.That's always worth a little bit of reflection.