Teratologies - A Cultural Study of Cancer (Hardcover, illustrated edition)

Stories of cancer are full of monsters and marvels; the monstrousness of the disease and the treatments, the marvels of the cures and the saved lives. Embodying our deepest fears, cancer is seen as a disease of society as well as of the individual, of the spirit as well as of the body. People who have cancer are bombarded with competing explanations of their conditions: it is genetically inherited; it is environmentally produced; it is the result of their personality.
Teratologies is a distinctively female look at how cancer is imagined and experienced in contemporary society. Beginning with powerful personal accounts of her own illness, Jackie Stacey explores changing beliefs about the causes of, and the cures for cancer in both biomedicine and its increasingly popular alternative counterparts. She also uses the case of cancer as a way of understanding some of the wider forces of contemporary cultural change.