Talking morphine: Pain and prognosis in Indian cancer care

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.