Regarding a Dec. 4 front-page headline, “Portland scientist, 73, pioneer in geophysics, loses fight with cancer”:

Your paper appears to unintentionally demean Caryl Johnson – indeed, all cancer patients – who succumb to cancer, by the choice of an overused and misleading metaphor that when a cancer patient dies, they are somehow “losers” in a battle. (This same analogy is, unfortunately, used a lot in obituaries.)

This misguided figure of speech implies that if the cancer patient had only fought harder, they would or could have survived, as though a patient’s fortitude determines the outcome of very complicated and challenging diseases that are cancers. Our society doesn’t label cancer care doctors “losers” when their patients die.

There are many ways the Press Herald could have written the headline regarding the death of Dr. Johnson, a remarkably accomplished scientist.

Phyllis Merriam

Rockland

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