I am looking at how immunotherapy treatments can affect the lives of people with terminal cancer. Currently these treatments are only experimental and most patients choose chemo, which can cause many negative side effects, or to forgo treatment and live in some sort of hospice care until their death. These new treatments have the potential to give patients more time with their loved ones, but will not destroy their bodies in the same way that chemo does. One of the main issues with terminal patients getting these treatments is they are expensive and insurance companies are less likely to pay for clinical trials, especially if it is for someone who has been diagnosed as terminal. My target audience is the patients and their families because there are many instances where doctors do not give all of the options or suggest chemo because it is more tested. I think it is important for people to be informed of all of their options before making a decision. I see my paper taking the route of an informational essay and because it is intended for people who won’t necessarily have science degrees it will be easier to read and understand than a more scholarly article would be.
2 thoughts on “Furthering the Conversation”
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I really like this topic because it is such an important option for people to know about. It’s also a good creative way to incorporate your Francis house experience into a topic outside of just hospice. You chose a really good audience if you are going to write and informational essay. The patient would benefit from this information the most and there is probably a need to have this information written in terms that any person can understand instead of the scientific jargon. Another option for your essay is making it a persuasive essay and directing it to the insurance companies to try to prove that the procedure should be covered.
As you’re considering your options, think about how you can focus this to make it most useful to patients and family members who are weighing their options. As you’ve explored in your bibliography, immunotherapy treatments are more effective for some cancers than others, so you may not be able to address all kinds of patients; rather it might make more sense to focus on patients with particular diagnoses.
Think, too, about what kinds of texts patients and families would be most receptive to–long-form essays aren’t your only option. Are there other ways of presenting information that would be usable?