Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its MetaphorsIllness as Metaphor is an examination of the fantasies concocted around conditions such as cancer and tuberculosis in our cultural history. Susan Sontag argues that illness is not a metaphor and that the most truthful way of regarding illnessand the healthiest way of being illis to resist such thinking. Her examples of metaphors and images of illness are taken from medical and psychiatric thinking, as well as from sources ranging from Greek and