Is it time to call a truce in the 'battle against disease'? | Kostas Kostarelos

Our obsession with war-like language in medicine and medical research may unconsciously limit our creativity in tackling diseaseAlmost every night I have watched the news these past few months my senses have been assaulted by unpleasant, at times distressing, images of war: missiles, killings and chemical bombs in Syria, Kenya, the USA. I wake up the next morning, pretending or forgetting what I watched the night before, and going to work with our researchers to develop the next potential high-tech cure for cancer, thinking: "does what we do matter at all … ?"So I was intrigued by an article that will be published in one of the scientific journals in our field entitled: "Nanomedicine metaphors: from war to care". The next lab meeting we had was very awkward, because I was constantly thinking that indeed a lot of the words we were using to communicate our science were directly imported from the language of war. Targeting, stealth nanoparticle, smart bomb, elimination, triggered release, cell death. I struggled to find alternative language.The language and semantics of war are commonly used to describe our approach to medical treatments. First of all, there are the frequent "wars" on different diseases that are declared by politicians (alluded to in a previous article), but more importantly I think it is our instinctive psychological need to "eradicate" disease when it occurs. In these "wars" there are indeed good guys (doctors) and bad guys (diseased tissue) and the "theatre...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: theguardian.com Blogposts Health Medical research Nanotechnology Society Science Source Type: news