Opinion: Medicine needs to stop sending patients to war

“If cancer treatments won’t help, how am I going to fight this?”

The sheer emotion in this inquiry from a patient could fill an empty room. It’s the distress of an irreconcilable paradox in care—a medical stalemate in a battle, void of victory. The perception is that the only remaining path forward is to “give up and let cancer win.”

Conceptualizing treatment as a violent conquest has birthed a difficult impasse in cancer care. Medicine…