War on words: cancer is a disease, not a battle

Emeritus professor Alan Bleakley and cancer patient Jacinta Elliott on the use of military metaphors, and Adrienne Betteley of Macmillan Cancer Support on end-of-life care. It is heartening to see a front-page article on the burden that the use of cancer war metaphors may place on patients ( Cancer war metaphors may harm recovery, 10 August), but we should also note that such metaphors continue to place a burden on doctors and nurses, framing contemporary healthcare – dominated by medicine