SIDE EFFECTS: MAY INCLUDE
Why “Side Effects” Is a Dangerous Lie
“Side effects may include…” is a phrase so normalized, so rehearsed, it barely registers. But the effects that follow are not “side” anything — they are direct, predictable, and often permanent. We call them what they are: Known Effects.
Permanent nerve damage
Organ failure
Infertility
Cognitive decline
Suicidal ideation
Secondary cancers
These aren’t side effects in the casual sense. They are systemic, often irreversible injuries built into the treatment. Yet medicine frames them as collateral, as if the price is negligible compared to “survival.”
What if survival means a life half‑lived?
What if the self you save is no longer yourself?
We invest in measuring “months gained,” staging upgrades, tumor responses. But we rarely measure what remains when the treatment is over: the disability, the memory lost, the body altered, the life diverted. People live—but they don’t always survive in the meaningful sense. And we treat that as acceptable.
The system has an answer for that too: be grateful. “Stay positive,” they say. Positivity doesn’t fix neuropathy. It doesn’t restore fertility. It doesn’t raise the hormone levels that were crushed. It doesn’t recalibrate memory or hearing or hormones. The body becomes a ledger of what the system chose not to measure.
Late‑effects research confirms this: most survivors report fatigue, neuropathy, sleep disorders, cognitive dysfunction years after treatment. Organs once dismissed as “side” now become liabilities—heart, kidneys, lungs, brain.
If cytotoxin carcinoginic drugs can cause secondary cancers, infertility, heart failure, nerve death—and is pitched as standard care—then what does “side effect” really mean? It’s not incidental—it’s precedent.
Until we count what’s left behind, we will keep measuring survival by the wrong yardstick.
Until we name these harms as predictable, measurable, and reportable, the system will continue to treat damage as ‘textbook’ rather than failure.
These are not side effects. They are injuries with a system behind them. If the language fails us—“side effect” too mild—we must change it. Because a life “saved” and then ruined counts less than a life lived.
Read more on this in the book Stage IV Capitalism: A Cured Patient Is A Lost Customer by Dwight David Johnson.
References
“Long Term and Latent Side Effects of Specific Cancer Types.” PMC.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5777532/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
“Physical and Psychological Long‑Term and Late Effects of Cancer.” PMC.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7047657/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
“Late and Long‑term Effects of Cancer (Treatment).” Cancer.org. American Cancer Society
“Long‑Term Side Effects of Chemotherapy.” Healthline.
“Chemotherapy‑Related Toxic Effects and Quality of Life.” PMC.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10594146/?utm_source=chatgpt.com