Clichés about hope and individual responsibility pervade popular-culture narratives about cancer in the US. Lochlann Jain critiques what she calls "the cultural management of cancer terror" and suggests alternative, more politically conscious ways of discussing disease. She also relates prevailing cancer rhetorics to notions of time, progress, and accumulation under capitalism.

In the mid-20th century, the US government and private companies joined together to develop medical applications from the byproducts of the nuclear industry. Ellen Leopold talks about the rise of radiotherapy, experiments on unwitting patients in US hospitals, and the pioneering lawsuit of a Kansas housewife called Irma Natanson, as well as the legacy of the Cold War on cancer detection and treatment today.