Law Commons^™

Advanced Cancer Patients' Construction Of Self During Oncology Consultations: A Transitivity Concordance Analysis, Neda Karimi, Annabelle Lukin, Alison Rotha Moore, Adam Walczak, Phyllis N. Butow

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper explores advanced cancer patients' self-identification from a grammatical-concordance perspective. It combines corpus linguistics tool of concordance and transitivity analysis to investigate the grammatical choices that advanced cancer patients make to identify and construct themselves during an oncology consultation. The data comprises 69 oncology consultations between advanced cancer patients (and in some consultations a companion or companions) and their oncologist. Findings reveal that these advanced cancer patients identified themselves with an active and informed role in terms of self-care, decision-making and other administrative activities; they identified their everyday life as an indispensable part of the domain of medicine; and …

Hope Logics: Biomedicine, Affective Conventions Of Cancer, And The Governing Of Biocitizenry, Nadine Ehlers, Shiloh Krupar

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This essay explores the deployment of hope within biomedicine. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s account of biopolitics, it argues that hope works in the service of biopolitical imperatives to govern life, and to secure, optimize, and speculate on that life. The essay broadly considers the operations of affect in biomedicine, and specifically examines the governing function of affective conventions of hope—that is, the perceptual, emotional, and corporeal modes of managing and responding to events that support biomedicine’s telos toward the affirmation of life. In relation to illness, hope conditions responses to bodily vulnerability and uncertainty, manages the present for the future, …

The Dialectics Of Vulnerability: Breast Cancer And The Body In Prognosis, Nadine Ehlers

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper argues that breast cancer prognosis potentially produces a circular dialectic in which a) the subject is compelled to perceive the body as vulnerable and separate (alien) to the self, and the treatments required make the body more vulnerable, more alien and b) this is held in tension with the fact that the very alienation and heightened vulnerability of the body in breast cancer treatment is productive; it collapses the boundaries through which the body and self are understood, often demands a conscious intimacy of/with the body, and points to critical enactments and understandings of embodied subjectivity. I use …

What’S Killing Tassie Devils If It Isn’T A Contagious Cancer?, Jody Warren, Brian Martin

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Scientists have been trying to figure out the cause of the deadly cancer affecting so many Tasmanian devils but the research doesn’t seem to be providing many useful answers. What if they’re looking in the wrong place for a cause and a cure?

The Tasmanian devil is Australia’s largest carnivorous marsupial. It is currently listed as “endangered” and risks becoming extinct. Most of the devils in Tasmania are developing ugly tumours on their faces due to what is called devil facial tumour disease (DFTD), and it is nearly always fatal.

The disease was first observed in 1996 and research into …

Hpv Vaccines And Cancer Prevention, Science Versus Activism, Lucija Tomljenovic, Roslyn Judith Wilyman, Eva Vanamee, Christopher A. Shaw

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The rationale behind current worldwide human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination programs starts from two basic premises, 1) that HPV vaccines will prevent cervical cancers and save lives and, 2) have no risk of serious side effects. Therefore, efforts should be made to get as many pre-adolescent girls vaccinated in order to decrease the burden of cervical cancer. Careful analysis of HPV vaccine pre- and post-licensure data shows however that both of these premises are at odds with factual evidence and are largely derived from significant misinterpretation of available data

The Pathogenesis Of Human Papillomavirus (Hpv) In The Development Of Cervical Cancer: Are Hpv Vaccines A Safe And Effective Management Strategy?, Roslyn Judith Wilyman

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection has been linked with cervical cancer. Some medical professionals see it as the determining causal agent and therefore promote vaccination as an effective prevention strategy. However, the biological plausibility of a causal theory requires that the incidence of the causal agent varies with the incidence and mortality of the disease. Yet the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer do not vary with the incidence of infection with HPV strains 16 and 18; the strains covered by the HPV vaccine. Though HPV infection is a necessary precursor to most cervical cancer, most high-risk HPV infections (with one …