Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers

Session 7 - Nature, Health, Illness and Disease
Chair: Peter Twohig

The Examination of the Causes of Cancer through an Environmental Lens
Ann Novogradec
Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The way in which the causes of cancer are currently studied in the literature are often fragmented and reductionist in nature; particularly those studies that are conducted in the fields of clinical medical research (tumour biology) and traditional epidemiology.  Few attempts have been made by disciplines such as these to offer a more holistic understanding of cancer etiology.  This is largely due to the fact that conventional methodologies used to study cancer are based on reductionist assumptions of mono-causality that essentially deflect research attention away from the possibility of examining cancer causation from multiple angles. The alternative of adopting a multi-causal and context-sensitive perspective to the study of cancer seems like a daunting undertaking to most researchers since such an approach would involve the incorporation of the broader environmental context. In this light, a more holistic methodology would be one that gives serious consideration to the natural (air, water, soil, etc.,), the built (synthetic chemicals, radioactive substances, etc.,) and the social (lifestyle choices, voluntary vs. involuntary exposures, etc) dimensions of cancer causation.
After reviewing and critiquing the traditional methods employed in the study of cancer, this paper will then discuss new and emerging alternatives – notably, those based on approaches from the fields of social epidemiology and environmental health. It is argued that by borrowing from these approaches, a more integrative understanding of the causes of cancer may be gained.  Further, this paper will discuss how the methods used to study cancer etiology can be enhanced through the incorporation of methods used to study the causes of contested environmental diseases such as multiple chemical sensitivity (i.e. environmental illness), chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.  To fully understand the complexities surrounding cancer causation, an integration of frameworks and methodologies must be adopted from a number of different disciplines—this paper will show how this is possible.

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At War with Ourselves: Immunology between Nature and Culture
Andrew Goffey
Middlesex University, United Kingdom

This paper proposes an interpretation of the prevailing understanding of immunology as the science of self-nonself distinction and the historically predominant metaphorisation of the relationship between the immune system and its pathogens in terms of war. The aim of the paper is to use these themes to develop a speculative view of health and illness which charts the emergence of the distinction between nature and culture within immunology.
The paper is divided into three parts. A brief first section provides an overview of the fate of martial tropes in the historical development of the science of immunology and a critical account of Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet's view of immunology as the science of self-nonself distinction.
The second section elaborates an account of some of the major developments of immunology over the course of the twentieth century.The conflict between chemical and cellular accounts of immunity (as represented in the works of Ehrlich and Metchnikoff), the development of clonal selection theory, the difficulties which mainstream immunology has in explaining the functioning of auto-antibodies will be analysed in terms of a framework derived partially from Alfred North Whitehead. The account aims to consider the role which metaphor has in shaping our understanding of immune processes as 'immanently' constructive in a way which troubles neat distinctions between innate and acquired immune responses.
The third section develops some of the consequences of the second in order to address what it sees as the properly ecological dimensions of problems of health and illness. The argument that is developed here is that a martial conception of health and illness is more than simply metaphorical once we understand the ways in which biogeographical history (as explored by for example Alfred Crosby and William McNeill) interacts with political, social and cultural history. Immunology, it will argue, is a good barometer of these interactions.

You Have Cancer
Keely Macarow
Collaborative Practice and Internship Program, School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

At the beginning of Mike Nichols’ film Wit (US, 2001, film, 99min), Professor Vivian Bearing is told that she has advanced ovarian cancer. As a result of this diagnosis, Vivian is located in hospital, and subjected to rigorous chemotherapy treatments which continue until her death. While Vivian’s medicalised body is stripped of agency by her involvement in a medical research trial and jettisoned with her physical decline, her verbal analysis of her medical settings and treatments are an enlightening discussion of the symbiotic relationship between medical carers and their patients.
It can be difficult to locate the right words to discuss one’s concerns about illness, treatment, or fear of death. By reading, watching and listening to other people’s experience with cancer, we can become cogniscent of the language required to communicate about the illness. Cinematic depictions of cancer through the constructed caricatures of women such as Professor Vivian Bearing can illuminate aspects of cancer to people who have not been personally affected by the disease. For instance, as a professor of poetry, Vivian Bearing was a vector of language. As a cancer patient she is a conduit for metastatic tumours, and the fallout of chemical warfare that is chemotherapy. Her time as a cancer patient is devoted to her treatment regime.
This paper will examine the intersection between cinema and medical anthropology, and the representation of the diseased and medicalised body of a scholar affected by cancer. For this paper, Nichols’ film, which is based on Margaret Edson’s1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play, will also be used to explore questions focusing on the symbiosis between doctors/patients, the depiction of death and dying and the relationship between the body, language and time.

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