Demonising cancer?

A frequent theme of mine since I began to write this blog is that people avoid talking about cancer. They change the subject, back away, mouth the word, 'cancer' silently and try to pretend it's not the huge elephant standing on a chair in the corner of the room if anyone should dare to mention 'that word' aloud.

My argument has always been that we should talk about cancer; it's not the end of the world. In fact, there are worse things that could happen. The more we avoid the discussion, the bigger the elephant gets as it feeds on our fears. 

Today, I may have changed my mind; you can talk too much about something and feed the elephant in a different way. According to a radio interview I caught this morning, there are discussions about making 'cancer lessons' a compulsory part of the curriculum. Why cancer? Why not multiple sclerosis or Parkinsons? Why not dementia? The answer seems to lie in a suspicion I raised in an earlier post; cancer is widely seen as something you bring on yourself. It's your fault. Why do I say this? In the interview, several school students independently announced they thought it would be 'good to know how to avoid getting cancer'; clearly, if you do the 'right thing', you'll be fine - it's nothing to do with genetics and completely tied to your lifestyle...

By all means, let's discuss cancer, but let's not raise it to a level where blame is attached to it, where we demonise those who are diagnosed with some form of cancer because it's quite clearly their own fault. Why can't we just recognise and accept that some people will develop cancer, some won't? The next step after apportioning blame, surely, is to refuse treatment to those who are considered to be culpable...