Elaine Schattner is a writer and clinical professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Military metaphors are commonplace when people talk about cancer — or should we say the “fight against cancer.” Since John McCain announced his brain cancer diagnosis, the senior senator from Arizona has received a barrage of supportive statements featuring martial language. Politicians and other well-wishers have explicitly connected his war hero reputation with a favorable outcome. “Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against,” former president Barack Obama tweeted. Vice President Pence wrote: “John McCain is a fighter & he’ll win this fight too.”
McCain’s daughter Meghan posted a tribute on Instagram, saying: “Cancer may afflict him in many ways: But it will not make him surrender. Nothing ever has.”
On television, newscasters discussing McCain’s diagnosis talked up his toughness, too. “There is nobody who is the kind of fighter that John McCain is,” said CNN’s Dana Bash. “. . . He has a fighter pilot’s mentality.”
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