How do you feel about this poster?
How do you feel about it being posted right outside a major cancer clinic?
It was the title that caught my eye as I walked past said cancer clinic on my way to lunch earlier today. There’s an awful lot of this “I’m so thankful I got cancer because it made me realise what’s important in life” rhetoric around at the moment – on the internet, on TV, in the self-help section of bookstores, and anywhere else you care to look. And while I have no doubt that many people benefit greatly from this positive thinking approach, I’ve also heard that many cancer patients find it to be just one more source of anxiety and stress, and resent it being perpetually rammed down their throats.
Think about it: you’ve been told you have a very serious disease that could very well kill you. You’re undergoing some of the most toxic, side-effects-heavy treatment known to man. You feel like shit, you’re losing your hair, you’re extremely worried about yourself, your family, your romantic relationship, your finances, your career, you name it…
…and people keep telling you you’re supposed to feel grateful for all this?
When I got closer to the poster, I realised that most of the information below the title is the kind of common sense, harmless-as-long-as-it-complements-rather-than-replaces-conventional-treatment content that won’t hurt and might just help. Under a different title, and with the exception of the “beneficial nature of illness” line, I might not have given the poster a second thought. And I’m sure some people did find the information interesting and helpful.
However, I recently helped to develop a translational research project recruitment poster for display in the same cancer clinic, and encountered very strict guidelines about what information can and can not be posted in areas used by patients. I can’t say for sure, but based on my understanding of the guidelines, I don’t think the poster I saw today would have made the grade. For that reason, I’m not very happy about the way the poster and its title target (some might say ‘cynically’) the area’s high density of vulnerable people.
Mind you, I also get mad when I see parking wardens put tickets on patients’ cars, a sentiment that is definitely not shared by all of my colleagues. So maybe I’m just being overly sensitive again.
Blog comments are my teacher: have at it!
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Cath@VWXYNot? on Book reviews – Knowledge Translation edition
- Grant Jacobs on Book reviews – Knowledge Translation edition
- Cath@VWXYNot? on Last Saturday:
- Alyssa on Last Saturday:
- Cath@VWXYNot? on I WROTE A BOOK!
Blogroll
- A Lady Scientist
- Academic International
- Alexander Honkala
- Ambivalent Academic
- Amelie's Welt
- Apple Pie and the Universe
- Arduous Blog
- Balanced Instability
- Blue Lab Coats
- Cancer Evo: Evolution and Cancer
- Candidate Models
- Chemical BiLOLogy
- Curiosity Killed the Cat
- Delicious Juice
- Dinner Party Science
- Dreams and Hopes of a (Former Postdoc) Scientist
- DrugMonkey (ScienceBlogs)
- DrugMonkey (Scientopia)
- Endless Possibilities
- ERV
- Everything and More
- Exponential Book
- Expression Patterns
- Fejes.ca
- Fumbling Towards Geekdom
- Grumpy rumblings of the untenured
- In Scientio Veritas
- It's a Micro World After All
- Kiwihorizons
- Life and Joys of Lisbeth and Tue
- Looking for Detachment
- Masks of Eris
- MicrobiologistXX
- My Fair Scientist
- Neurotic Physiology
- Not To Be Trusted With Knives
- Post Doc Ergo Propter Doc
- Prof-like Substance
- Professor in Training
- Punctuated Equilibrium
- ScientistMother – Raising Replicates
- Some Lies
- Stripped Science
- The Assertive Cancer Patient
- The Digital Cuttlefish
- The Excitable Scientist
- The Gene Gym
- The Happy Scientist
- The Hermitage
- There and (Hopefully) Back Again
- This Scientific Life
- Unbalanced Reaction
- Uphilldowndale
- Xykademiqz
- You Do Too Much
Categories
- bad people
- blog buddies
- blog roll
- book review
- Canada
- career
- communication
- competition
- current affairs
- cycling
- drunkenness
- education
- embarrassing fan girl
- English language
- environment
- evolution
- exercise
- family
- food glorious food
- freakishness
- furry friends
- grant wrangling
- hockey pool
- medicine
- meme
- meta
- music
- nature
- original research
- personal
- photos
- politics
- Primate Party
- publishing
- rants
- science
- silliness
- snow
- sport
- technology
- travel
- UK
- Uncategorized
- Vancouver
- videos
Archives
Meta
It looks like a nasty piece of victim blaming. Essentially it’s telling cancer patients they have cancer because of their own lifestyle choices (i.e. not living in a hippie commune or something). Some of these patients will already be cataloguing their past behaviour with an intense sense of guilt looking foe the cause of their disease.
Honestly, if I’d seen this outside our hospital I would have ripped it down.
Very interesting take. My mind was on the way some patients get very stressed by the positive thinking thing, as I’ve been reading about that a lot lately, and the victim blaming part completely passed me by.
I actually thought about removing the poster, but then I over-thought it on my way to lunch and back, and when I passed the poster again I decided to blog it instead.
I’d say that’s a particularly vicious form of advertising, putting outside the cancer center
One more vote and I’ll rip it down on my way home
I vote twice
Surely it’ll make a good toy for the cats. or perhaps something for them to sit on.
I agree with the others – the people who put it up are probably well-meaning, but this does look like a pile of woo in the offing.
It also costs $10, and the only web presence I could find for this guy was a pdf for the venue, and a defunct Craigslist entry. The Kushi Institute’s sidebar has, as its first three entries, “Home”, “Testimonials”, “Donations”. An interesting set of priorities, eh?
BTW, that was Ian’s other vote.
The poster makes it sound like cancer is REVERSIBLE. Some of these things might be good advice if you want to prevent the disease, or at least reduce your risk, but your cancer is not going to go away from chewing your food better.
I vote for leaving it on there, but sticking a Cancer Society leaflet underneath or above it. Preferably something about risk reduction. Like this page
And then circle the part about what “risk” means.
I don’t know. Coming from a childhood where my mom very nearly died of cancer when I was 7, I can only see how it has helped her change her perspective on life. Yes, it has caused great harm and is the reason she’s disabled today, but I also know a lot of the “warm and fuzzy positive thinking” really did help.
These types of posters will always catch those that are susceptible to them. If we tear down this one, should we tear down all the ones about “work from home and earn $$$” that prey on the naivety of our workforce? Maybe not quite the same analogy- but I guess I tune out these types of posters more often than not.
To add to my comment above: I would leave it on (and add to it) rather than take it off because a lot of people who avoid mainstream medicine think that it’s all about chemicals and drugs and Big Pharma. Showing that even the mainstream cancer research funding agencies promote healthy eating (but explain what the benefits of healthy eating actually are) might make someone more likely to consider non-alternative treatment sooner (before it’s too late).
Eva, I’d be wary of adding anything official to it, as it might give it the look of an official endorsement, at least from a distance. The Canadian Cancer Society, whose website you linked to, have an office diagonally opposite the poster…
Kyrsten, I’m not denying that some people will find the advertised seminar helpful. It’s just that given that other people will find the poster stressful (or think that it’s blaming them for their disease), I’d rather it’s not in their face like this.
I’m definitely leaning towards taking it down. People who disagree have about 2.5 hours to convince me otherwise 🙂
p.s. Bob, my cats are addicted to cardboard. I can’t put a flat piece or a box down anywhere in the house without it being immediately sat on/in and/or ripped to shreds. Maybe sheets of paper could be used as kitty methadone?
I used to look after a cat who loved sitting in cardboard boxes. I would then wave a cat toy round, and she would leap out of the box at it. The floor was smooth, so the box would fly backwards and she would end up not nearly as close to the toy as she hoped.
Tearing cardboard boxes up is beneath The Beast. he might nibble a plant, but he only does that as a not so subtle hint.
I would be scared that someone goes for this “treatment”/attitude alone and skip the drugs… maybe as a complement I think it sounded okish (but the blame your lifestyle is hard to chew). Attitude is a lot for the cure and treatment process. Only chewing things and thinking about “lifestyle changes”, well not so much in my book.
Maybe if it wasn’t posted outside of the cancer place, I’d be less negative?! I think it sounds like an interesting idea in general to consider your life but I don’t think you should prey on people who are in a vunerable position.
The conversation about cancer and changing the life and the positive things you are talking about Cath – I wonder if that is partly because people need to find something positiive with something that shattering? And maybe their disease is their first encounter with death/threatening conditions in their families? I have heard lots of people stating the same thing, after one person in their family was diagnosed with cancer or died/life altering changes.
Well, that went well. The poster must have been impregnated with catnip or something, because Google pounced, rolled around with it for a while,
then washed like she’s never washed before.
That woo sure makes you feel dirty!
Ă…sa, yeah, who knows what they actually tell people about conventional treatments at the seminar. The cancer clinic do run some complementary medicine, nutrition and exercise workshops for patients, and the posters for those programmes are all over the building; I hope that most people are choosing those (free!) events instead, and that the oncologists are closely questioning patients who decide to go off their treatment plans (which does happen, and often for very good reasons).
I think you’re right that many people do need to find a positive in such a horrible experience. But the problem comes when this attitude becomes so ubiquitous that people feel like a failure if they don’t feel positive about their disease and treatments. See these posts for examples…
(I started reading Jeanne’s blog, and other cancer patients’ blogs, when I started my current job, which brings me much closer to patients than ever before in my career. I’ve learned a LOT).
As a chronic worrier, I see your point about it being difficult for some to handle having all that positive crap shoved down their throat. Telling a worrier to be positive is one of the absolute worst things you can do, because they are very afraid of being positive. So, in turn, they feel guilty for not feeling positive about something awful in their life and then begin to worry about that…
It’s a vicious circle.
I’m not sure about taking down the poster. I’m a big proponent of “to each their own”. I’d leave it up.
While I don’t like everything that’s listed on that poster, particularly the beneficial nature of illness and possible guilt-trip it might cause those who haven’t lived the clean, natural lifestyle it promotes, in the end I’d leave it alone.
Its still got a relatively positive message and sort-of balances out the other war against cancer/beat cancer/battle the disease viewpoint and propaganda.
Cath> yes, I agree with you. What I really meant with the positive attitude that (most often) comes from overcoming diseases like cancer is that “there is a reason to really live the life”. I guess I find it a bit sad that that message goes lost without the death/illness to remind us/people. (I’m not better than anyone I just find it sad to get too caught up in small things and miss the bigger picture…. hem hem)
Google seemed to have liked it a lot 🙂
I didn’t even mention the money since that is what pisses me off the most. I’m all for a positive look on your disease, and “focus on the good things” etc, but it is a bit geschäft with the “don’t do drugs, do positive thinking with me after you give me money and it will all be better if you just think positively”.
Well, it’s done, for better or for worse. Thanks to everyone who commented, and while I appreciate the dissenting comments, this felt like the right thing to do.
If anyone’s appalled by my violation of free speech rights, it’s actually illegal to post adverts in this way, so I was also upholding the law, if that helps 🙂
Alyssa, a vicious cycle indeed, and just when you really don’t need it…
Elizabeth, that’s a great point about the other side of the “cancer treatment as war” language that is also so often used. Again, some people find that language helpful, while others find it stressful. Ideally, the medical team will be able to decide how best to talk to each of their patients (and which programmes each person might benefit from). I’ve been to a few symposia and retreats where people have talked about their research into these kinds of supportive care programmes and quality of life issues, and it’s really interesting stuff.
Ă…sa, yes, it’s a shame that so many people don’t take time to stop and smell the roses. I’m as guilty as the next person…
the for-profit angle pissed me off too, although $10 is very cheap really!
Somehow, terminology such as ‘holistic healing’ makes me look at stuff with extreme prejudice. It almost always points to pseudoscientific mishmash of unproven, implausible, even absurd, health-related claims and dollops of Eastern style mysticism. Those that are saying that there might be something in this lecture are likely engaging in wishful thinking. What the eff is ‘beneficial nature of illness’? Someone who has been diagnosed with and/or is being treated for cancer would obviously reprioritize their lives, since cancer can indicate a terminal illness. The same may sometimes be true for any major life events also. There is nothing beneficial in cancer, except in a weirdly fatalistic, philosophically onanistic way. What does ‘erasing unchangable past’ even mean? ‘Diseases of affluence and poverty’ are myths that have been busted long, long back; economic status has nothing to do with the genetic predisposition to certain disorders. And ‘classifying cancer into Yin and Yang’? Why, then, bother finding out about proto-oncogens, oncogenic signaling, mutations and so forth?
It is high time to recognize ‘holistic healing’ for what it is: a means to prey – emotionally and financially – upon unfortunate victims of disorders and disabilities, especially those that are grasping at straws.
Yep, I’m with Kausik, pretty much. Though there obviously is more to treating people with cancer than just the surgery/chemo/radiotherapy they get, I am deeply suspicious of the “holistic healing” crew. Most of the time it is simply an excuse to push bullshit at people, and even the people in medical schools who are into “integrative medicine” far too often display, as the saying is:
The other problem is that, as applied by said rather credulous folk within healthcare, the embracing of “integrative approaches” far too often works as a Trojan horse to let the real fringe fruit-loops in the door as well.
Anyway, go Cath, say I.
Cath: the starting fee is $10….. I’m quite sure there will be other more volunteer donations along the line.
(NB! I might be wrong about this specific thing but in general I would say that’s how I’ve encountered it. It just builds slowly until you’ve given a bit too much… and then you don’t want to walk away since you feel silly and stupid of not believining it. and then you are stuckish)
Ah – like Scientology. Could be 🙂
This poster offends me deeply. My cousin did all that crap, tried chemical, radiological and holistic healing, and still died an awful death from adrenocortical carcinoma. She was in her twenties, had a healthy lifestyle, did NOTHING to “deserve” it and need to “erase (an) unchangeable past” and this guy can go &*%! himself.
Thanks for your perspective, Laurie. And I’m so sorry for your loss.