The other day a friend of mine died of cancer. It was pancreatic: swift, certain, essentially untreatable. Death followed detection by half a year. After Edna heard her diagnosis and investigated her options, she decided against further toxic, aggressive steps to slow the disease. She opted instead for care that would control the pain, keep her lucid as long as possible, and let her die peacefully at home.

She chose, in short, not to "fight" her cancer, not to wage a "battle" against an overpowering "enemy." By so doing, she violated one of the media's current sacred principles of how to approach the disease. In the popular press, cancer, especially breast cancer, is an "adversary" against which the right-thinking person "struggles" as long and hard as possible and succumbs only when utterly vanquished. In the great majority of feature stories about cancer, as well as in many books, obituary notices and profiles of deceased persons, you will notice this pugilistic turn of phrase. The sick person that we should admire, this language implies, is the one who waged the longest, bitterest, most persistent "campaign" against the malignancy.

Just about the time that death claimed Edna, I read an article in HealthNews, The Language of War and Breast Cancer by Holly Atkinson, about the damage that this warlike vocabulary does. She quoted Barron H. Lerner, who wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine that "the rhetoric of a decades-old war against breast cancer" frames much of the discussion of the disease and "provides one of the most vivid examples about how metaphoric language enters scientific debate. . . . " Of course, the war-on-cancer image, universal since Nixon's time, covers more than just breast cancer.

Edna knew better than the feature writers, though. A profoundly wise, brave, honest, and spiritual woman in her seventies, she had spent her professional career in medical laboratories and her retirement - up until mere months before her death - using her skills as a volunteer for a number of charitable clinics and agencies. So she knew that cancer is not an "enemy" that she could "lick" but a highly dangerous and, in her case, inevitably fatal disease. She knew what the diagnosis meant and what the treatments were like, and she chose to spend her remaining days on earth as fully herself, not as a bleary, anesthetized patient undergoing excruciating and invasive procedures. She chose, in short, to be a sick person surrounded by those who loved her, not a fighter in any war.

I do not, of course, wish to denigrate in any way the decisions of those who do all that they can to extend their lives. Other friends of mine, Judy and Harriet, when diagnosed with breast cancer in their late thirties, sought out every treatment that could possibly help them survive the disease. Neither ultimately succeeded, but their courage and persistence in the face of repeated surgeries and endless suffering from chemotherapy and radiation arose not from a martial spirit but in large measure from their desire - deeper even than their own need for peace - not to leave their young children motherless at vulnerable stages of their lives.

Military language, Atkinson writes, "has probably helped advocates influence breast cancer politics, but with a price." It has, Lerner notes, "contributed to a highly contentious atmosphere in which the actual value of early detection and aggressive treatment have at times been oversold." "The 'all or nothing' wartime mentality," Atkinson agrees, "may also foster the overuse of procedures."

As a journalist watching friends die, I have known for some time that members of my profession have - often with the best intentions in the world - helped make life harder for many cancer patients. If society insists that the courageous course is always to "battle" the disease, then are people who choose not to do so cowards? If "fighting" cancer can save your life, then did people who die perhaps not "fight" hard enough? As stricken individuals work to make the best choices for themselves and their families, they certainly do not need any sort of media cheering section influencing such intensely personal decisions.

We all know where good intentions can sometimes lead, and the good intentions of journalists, because they tend to echo and re-echo throughout the culture, can get people to that infernal destination particularly fast. Despite the desperate desire to see better treatments and even cures - a desire that I certainly share, having lost my father, other relatives, and far too many friends to various cancers - I think it's long past time to call a halt to military metaphors. Cancer is not an enemy, an adversary, or a foe, except in the most metaphorical sense. It is not a malign opponent to be outsmarted or overpowered. It is, in fact, nothing more or less than a constellation of diseases - many now incurable or even effectively untreatable - that arise from malfunctions in the most basic processes of cellular life.

There is no one right way for people to face cancer, any more than there is one right way for people to face their own mortality. Nor is it anyone else's business to judge or appraise what a person decides to do in the existential crisis that cancer presents. I have seen various courageous responses to this terrible disease. Some people show great courage, dignity, and love by subjecting themselves to the most aggressive and harrowing procedures. Others show great courage, dignity, and love by deciding to simply be sick until the disease takes them. "War is not good for children and other living things," the old slogan used to say. I don't think it's good for cancer patients either.