ArticleMedical anthropology quarterly2025
Talking morphine: Pain and prognosis in Indian cancer care.
Article in Medical anthropology quarterly, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Care-full negotiation of hospital discharge and end-of-life care in an Indonesian palliative care unit.Medical anthropology quarterly · 2026Article
- Talking morphine: Pain and prognosis in Indian cancer care.Medical anthropology quarterly · 2025Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
Pain can be a pervasive feature of cancer, particularly in regions such as India, where the disease is rarely detected in its early stages. Yet over recent decades, morphine, a "gold standard" pain medicine, has been rarely used in India. This article draws on anthropological discussions of clinical disclosure in Indian cancer care to complicate assertions that this is because pain is missed or ignored by healthcare workers. Instead, in a context where the disclosing of prognoses is partial and indirect, I argue that morphine has gained a communicative function. Typically withheld until the "end of life", the drug has come to be read as a death sentence. It has become an analgesic and a prognosis. It is an object that talks in situations where direct communication is often avoided.
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