Volume 187 - Issue 4
Words, words, words
Author: Warwick H Ruse
Med J Aust 2007; 187 (4): 255-256. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2007.tb01229.x
Published online: 20 August 2007
Published online: 20 August 2007
To the Editor: Could I use a tiny fragment of a recent article as springboard to a plea for a change in terminology?
Wilcken et al refer to two observations on the use of tamoxifen changing clinical practice, “and thousands of lives were potentially saved”.1 Are we fooling ourselves? Surely it is more accurate to say, in the situation of breast cancer in lives already well advanced, that thousands of deaths were postponed? “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”2
Could we leave “lives saved” to the populist sensationalist media, and only use it in medicine for interventions in trauma, and possibly infection, in young people whose life expectancy is otherwise so good that their life has been truly “saved”?
“. . . speech impelled us to purify the dialogue of the tribe and urge the mind to aftersight and foresight . . .”3
References
- Wilcken NR, Gebski VJ, Pike R, Keech AC. Putting the results of a clinical trial into perspective. Med J Aust 2007; 186: 368-370.
- Eliot TS. Burnt Norton (Four quartets. No. 1). In: Collected poems 1909–1962. London: Faber and Faber, 1963: 190. 0_i1091815
- Eliot TS. Little Gidding (Four quartets. No. 4). In: Collected poems 1909–1962. London: Faber and Faber, 1963: 218. 0_pgfId-1298328