Bioethics and Cancer: When the Professional Becomes Personal

Abstract

Scholars in bioethics and health policy often address topics related to cancer, yet few engaged in this work have lived with cancer themselves. Experience as a cancer patient or family caregiver extends and deepens one’s thinking about issues in ethics and health policy. This essay presents material from a project involving seven scholars who have been cancer patients or cared for a spouse with cancer. It describes how personal experience changed and supplemented our understanding of topics like treatment decision-making, patient autonomy, informed consent, and end-of-life care. The essay calls on scholars to give more consideration to the lived experience of illness when analyzing issues in bioethics and health policy.