Christopher Hitchens, the well-known pundit and essayist, writes gracefully and intelligently about his cancer in Vanity Fair, just as he writes gracefully and intelligently about everything else. In one significant passage, he takes up the issue of "fighting" cancer:
Unfortunately, it also involves confronting one of the most appealing clichés in our language. You’ve heard it all right. People don’t have cancer: they are reported to be battling cancer. No well-wisher omits the combative image: You can beat this. It’s even in obituaries for cancer losers, as if one might reasonably say of someone that they died after a long and brave struggle with mortality. You don’t hear it about long-term sufferers from heart disease or kidney failure.
Myself, I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.
Let's unpack this passage a bit, starting with the phrase in the second line: "battling cancer." Hitchens is absolutely right: everybody says "I am battling cancer," or "You should fight your cancer," or some variant of such martial talk. Moreover, anybody who has read or heard anything from or about Hitchens knows that he is notoriously combative, at least with words.
So it would make sense that Hitchens would be militant in his cancer-fighting imagery. Except, of course, that he isn't militant, at least not in this essay. As he observes, "When you sit in a room . . . [receiving cancer drugs] the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water." That's not very combative.
Hitchens is entitled to his opinions, of course, and for all we know, he will come out swinging tomorrow.
But we might step back a little bit and consider Hitchens' situation--and the situation we all face, sooner or later. It's perfectly reasonable to think that we are fighting a disease. Indeed, the disease struck first. And disease is, after all, trying to sicken, incapacitate, or kill you.
So why not fight back? Why not seek to remove, irradiate, poison, or otherwise destroy the disease agent? After all, it's kill or be killed. As America GI's said at D-Day, back in 1944, if we stay on this beach, we are sure to get killed, so we might as well advance and take our chances. And what do you know--the Americans took the heights overlooking the beaches, on their way to victory against Hitler. Active is better than passive. Proactive is better than reactive.
But here's a point on fighting cancer: Such fighting is best done in advance. When cancer strikes a victim, that victim might not be in a good position to fight. We can analogize the situation to that of a soldier on a battlefield: The time for maximum heroics is when the soldier is healthy. After the soldier is hit, well, it's harder to score a victory. As George Patton said, the goal of war is not to die for your country--it's to make the enemy die for his country.
Moreover, while we all celebrate the heroism of Patton and others in World War Two--from Audie Murphy to John Basilone to Mike Strank to thousands and millions of other heroes--we should remember that we won World War Two mostly because of superior technology. It takes nothing away from the heroism of our troops to note that we had superior materiel to pile on the Germans and the Japanese, culminating, of course, in the atomic bomb. It's perfectly fair to say that World War Two was won in the foundries of Pittsburgh, and the shipyards of Oakland, and in the laboratories of Cambridge and Pasadena.
It's also safe to say that we will win our next war--or not--based on the technology we have, or don't have. Will we attempt another counter-insurgency with insufficiently armored vehicles, or with heavily armored vehicles that tip over on narrow roads? Let's hope not. Because if we go to war, once again, with the army we have, as opposed to the army we need, we might find the results to be disappointing. Or worse.
And the same holds true with disease. We needed Hitchens' fighting spirit, on the issue of cancer, before he got cancer. When the disease strikes, it might be too late. We needed Hitchens thinking about nuking cancer when he was at the peak of his intellectual and rhetorical powers--not once he has been sickened and weakened. Yes, he has moral authority now, and his story speaks to us with human interest and compassion, and so we still can benefit from his voice.
But by his own account, he is less able to concentrate, and he might not have much time left to write anything. Hitchens is 61. He had decades to help persuade others that cancer was a war--instead, he fought other wars, intellectually. Quite possibly, he doesn't regret any of the choices he made, but just as possibly, he might wish that he had more time on this earth to keep fighting those fights. As the Roman military strategist Vegetius is believed to have said, "If you want peace, prepare for war." To which we could add, "If you want victory, prepare for war." And the time to prepare is in advance.
That is, the time to develop Serious Medicine is now.
Let's hope and pray--even if Hitchens, a notorious atheist, might not want us to bother--that Hitch makes a full recovery. But let's also think to ourselves: The cancer war is coming, and we should be ready for it --with maximum firepower. If we wanted to, if we bothered to make the effort, we could fight the cancer war with the same overwhelming force that we used during World War Two--and all of our successful wars.
Hitchens' essay can thus serve as a rallying cry, an inspiration for the rest of us. But I am sure that he himself would rather be around to toast the victory.
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May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
Everyone be on the alert for signs of Barrett's Syndrome- catch that before it morphs.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
I think he's not very combative, because he knows his cancer is so advanced that he hasn't much time. Even with all the modern technology available, his prognosis is grim. As he states in the VF piece, his father died of cancer of the esophagus as well, and he hasn't exactly lived a lifestyle that promoted cancer prevention. It catches up with you. Despite his great intellect, like most of us, being honest with himself proved to be more difficult than being eloquent. There's really not much reason to fight. He'll be gone in a few painful months, and he knows it. Like wars, all cancers aren't created equal. And this one's nasty. But unfortunately, he didn't fight when he had the chance or maybe he just decided he'd go the same way as his father, so he did as he wished. I do hope that in the next few weeks and months that he is able to be as comfortable as possible and surrounded by friends and family. But you're right, it is a reminder to take a good look at ourselves and seek to improve.
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
But everywhere I look I see people trying to cure cancer. "Race for the Cure" and all that. Are you saying we're not trying hard enough?
Or are you saying that if we're going to spend $1 trillion on "health care," it should be spent on curing things, not treating things? What I think you're saying -- and I think I agree with this -- is that the Federal Highway Act or the Rural Electrification Act of the future should be an all-out effort to cure the big, expensive-to-treat diseases like cancer and Alzheimers. A few billion spent on that would reap major dividends down the line. Is that sort of what you're saying? If so, that's an intriguing notion. And it means that pretty much every single thing we're doing now -- including the giant greasy mess of Obamacare -- is totally and utterly wrong. Which I think anyway, so you've convinced me, at least.
Or am I misunderstanding you?
Jun '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
Rob Long
A few billion spent on that would reap major dividends down the line. Is that sort of what you're saying? If so, that's an intriguing notion.
Here here, Rob! Now it's time to set up a Ricochet fellowship for portly, bearded Ricochet members doing research on such issues!....
Hitch still managed the strength to spew some hate at the Holy Father I noticed. How...eloquent.
Jun '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
Unfortunately, I think "the time to develop Serious Medicine" may have passed us by with the advent of Obamacare. I am an incredibly fortunate 3-time cancer survivor. I benefited from surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and adjuvant medications. Each time I was diagnosed, I felt secure in the knowledge that American medical care and research is second to none--there have always been options open to me. I hope and pray that I will feel the same if there ever is--God forbid--a fourth time. But I fear that the only way Obamacare can stay afloat is to take options away from people like me. At that point, the only "serious medicine" available to us all will be prayer.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
KayBee
At that point, the only "serious medicine" available to us all will be prayer. · Aug 5 at 11:38am
Or moving to another country (India, Thailand, the Philippines) for treatment. Medical technology is transportable and it moves pretty fast... If you want "experimental" treament the USA is probably best, but experimental treatment may not be allowed by our superiors...
Aug '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens confronts cancer--and we all confront the need for Serious Medicine. Note to self: Prospective is better than retrospective
The cancer war is coming, and we should be ready for it --with maximum firepower... We could fight the cancer war with the same overwhelming force that we used during World War Two--and all of our successful wars.
Richard Nixon already tried a war on cancer. And it failed.
Because command science ultimately fails.
Command science does the same thing to scientific inquiry that a command economy does to economic life. We ooh and ah over the achievements it does produce, but we'd be fools not to count the opportunity cost -- what could have been done those resources had they not been funneled through a central power.
Eisenhower said when he left office, "A government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity." And that was then! Think of how much more scientific funding has centralized since then!
Before solid theories coalesce, scientific thought, too, is subject to fashions and whims. Centralized funding gets everyone to follow the same whim. When the fat kid on the trampoline jumps, we all jump
Science, even in mastering noxious illness, cannot be waged as war. Unity is strength in war, but science needs freedom to disagree, to screw up, to explore.