“It is difficult enough to be injured or gravely ill. To add to this the burden of guilt over a supposed failure to have the right attitude toward one’s illness is unconscionable. Linking health to personal virtue and vice not only is bad science, it’s bad medicine.”

— What did you think of Richard Sloan’s Times op-ed, “A Fighting Spirit Won’t Save Your Life?” The narrative of disease in American/Western culture is a strange thing. You see enough variations of cancer and it’s pretty obvious that cancer isn’t particularly discerning regarding who it affects, despite people’s hope. And the way that raw food diets and things are marketed towards the sick, how it makes money off hope, it’s rather nauseating. (While also, likely, being a good idea when it comes to lifestyle.) A topic that may be too complicated for this one op-ed.