For some people, cancer has acquired a strange allure. In John Green’s blockbuster young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars, tragic, beautiful young people with terminal diagnoses are alternately funny and profound as they face their fates. Online, some cancer victims have even become celebrities. Since the early days of the internet, patients and their families have shared their stories online as a way to cope with the isolating effects of illness. There are hundreds of these pages on the internet, most of them genuine, the great majority on Facebook: Prayers for Shane, Hope for Hannah, Rally for Rowan. Many of these groups originated as a way to communicate with friends, family, and colleagues, but it does not take long for strangers to start tuning in, too. The most popular cancer blogs have tens of thousands of followers. They fund raise by selling T-shirts and bumper stickers, and their stories sometimes become famous enough to merit articles in mainstream magazines. This attention has inspired people eager for the privileged status of the sick - the sympathy, if not the suffering, of real cancer patients and their “courageous battles”.