Last year, COVID-19 deaths got all the attention. But we’ve lived for decades with a far deadlier killer: cancer. In 2020, cancer claimed more than 600,000 lives in the United States. While that doesn’t reduce the seriousness of 350,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 nationwide, given cancer’s prominence as a COVID-19 comorbidity, it does warrant concern. For many years, cancer has been a leading cause of death around the world, and experts expect the annual cancer death toll to rise even more in the years ahead. Our complex relationship with cancer goes beyond the death count. One aspect is the particular attitude we hold toward this disease. Cancer seems to inspire warlike terms like no other disease. People routinely talk of their battles with cancer, and those who make their way to remission are known as survivors. In 1971, President Richard Nixon famously declared a “war on cancer” when he signed …