doctors consider that the truthwill be intolerable to all but exceptionally mature andintelligent patients.
intelligence does not change the way people react when learning that they suffer from a lethal disease, both of these patients can feel fear and can understand their situation if educated accordingly by doctors. I believe that by refusing to speak about taboo topics in general, only reinforces the stigma
As long as a particular disease is treated asan evil, invincible predator, not just a disease, mostpeople with cancer will indeed be demoralized bylearning what disease they have
Similarly, this prejudice also affects people who suffer from mental disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, or addictions to substances, and are frowned upon by modern societies. As a result, many of them avoid acknowledging their symptoms, in fear of being stigmatised.
find them-selves being shunned by relatives and friends and arethe object of practices of decontamination by mem-bers of their household, as if cancer, like TB, were aninfectious disease
Possibly due to lack of education, or misinformation about illnesses like cancer, people tend to rely on their instinctive fear of something that they cannot control
. For as long as itscause was not understood and the ministrations ofdoctors remained so ineffective, TB was thought to bean insidious, implacable theft of a life. Now it is can-cer's turn to be the disease that doesn't knock before itenters, cancer that fills the role of an illness experi-enced as a ruthless, secret invasion—a role it will keepuntil, one day, its etiology becomes as clear and itstreatment as effective as those of TB have become
here we can see that even though medicine has advanced since TB, and continues advancing in a rapid pace, humanity has to face new challenges and evolve
sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for aspell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that otherplace.
illnesses in some way connect us humans with one another around the world, reminding us that we are all equally vulnerable when it comes to life and death situations