It is a dark game. While we're going to dark places, Dr. Kel's in-game experiences are rather consistent with real-world symptoms of longterm carbon monoxide poisoning. Now that I think about it, there's some good evidence that Dr. Kel is hallucinating every alien encounter due to inhaling some sort of local poison. But I enjoy speculating about these things; the ambiguity is fun, because we get to interpret for ourselves what's actually happening.
Anyway, no big deal. DrNose builds his game however he wants to and I like that. This is just my personal response to 0.8.0, so I hope the feedback is helpful. Others in this forum seem fine with the sudden addition of a terminal cancer mechanic. However this specific thing is a hard-pass stopping point for me. I must exit the wild ride.