An issue of life and death

There is a good article at The New York Times- "A Place Where Cancer Is the Norm"

It is about a hospital where Cancer patients are treated, and the article says, it is a small world in itself.

"With more than 17,000 employees and warrens of color-coded hallways so vast that even employees get lost, M. D. Anderson is its own parallel universe, where nothing matters but cancer. Patients sit in the lobbies and compare notes.

“Everyone in the waiting room talks about ‘How did you find yours?’ ” said June Toland, 71, of Harlingen, Tex., who is being treated for sarcoma, a cancer of connective tissue.

Every patient at Anderson has cancer. Every family member sitting anxiously in the lounges or lingering at a bedside or sleeping in a Murphy bed in a patient’s room has had the life-changing experience of being touched by cancer.

“It feels sometimes like the entire world has cancer,” said Cindy Davis, a nurse in the breast cancer clinic who has breast cancer herself."

Now I could go on and on about this article, calling attention to extracted passages. I don't want to do that.

The article is an example of fine, sensitive writing backed up by facts.  It narrates the atmosphere in the hospital, and more specially how it feels to be a cancer patient. It made me think  about mankind's battle with disease, and cancer is one at which we are throwing more money and effort than others, such as malnutrition.

But the issue of the article, that interests me more than others is this:

"Dr. Russell Harris, an associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolinaand a member of a board that evaluates cancer therapies for the National Institutes of Health, said the temptation at major cancer centers like Anderson was to try treatment after treatment.

“Everyone is totally immersed in the idea that death is the enemy,” Dr. Harris said. Such a no-holds-barred stance, he added, is spurring a growing debate in the cancer community.

“There is a lot of concern within the oncology community right now, and appropriately so, that people don’t completely understand what they are getting into,” Dr. Harris said."

Your comments appear here