Charlotte Huff laments the blame game that is so often associated with cancer diagnoses:
After Linnea Duff learned at age 45 that she had developed lung cancer, she practically encouraged people to ask if she had ever smoked. But in the eight years since, her feelings have soured considerably on the too-frequent question, and she’s developed an acute sense of solidarity with fellow patients: smokers, former smokers, and never-smokers alike.
“It’s just so inappropriate,” says Duff, who believes that people with other serious illnesses don’t field so many intrusive queries. “Would you ask someone, ‘Did you eat too much?’ or ‘Did you have too much sex?’”
Why this line of inquiry persists:
Judgments about behavior not only unsettle and stigmatize the patient, but reflect the interrogator’s own insecurities. Frequently, those disease detectives are attempting to regain a sense of control amid the inherently random and sometimes unjust world that we all reside in, according to researchers who have studied stigma. Psychologists refer to this as the “just-world hypothesis,” a bias in thinking and perception that was first described by psychologist Melvin Lerner and colleagues more than four decades ago, and which has since been documented in numerous books and articles.
The Dish 