Amy C. Moore, Director of Patient Engagement and Advocacy at Summit Therapeutics, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Words matter. And I won’t claim to always get it right either. But I still hear people use phrases like “patients progressing” or “patients become resistant/resistant patients.”
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, under the guidance of leading patient advocates including Jill Feldman and others, developed the IASLC Language Guide that highlights ways we can incorporate person-first language into our lexicon, be it in abstracts, presentations or just our everyday conversations.
In the examples above, tumors or cancer progresses. Tumors/cancer become resistant.
When we know better, we can start to do better.
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