We are living in a time of war on multiple fronts. This is as true metaphorically as it is geographically. In particular, we live in an age in which war has been declared against disease, and war has been declared against terror. This essay considers in tandem the costs of those wars—more precisely, the costs of those metaphors of war.The author gratefully acknowledges contributions to this paper from conversations at a colloquium of the “town-gown” medical ethics discussion group at Indiana University's Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, with special thanks to Richard Miller (Poynter Center director), Jennifer Girod, Caitlin Kelly, Gates Agnew, and Byron Bangert, and from conversations at Tokyo University's 21st Century COE Project for Death and Life Studies, with special thanks to Susumu Shimazono and Miyako Takahashi.