Jimmy Carter says he has cancer, revealed by recent surgery
ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter, who at age 90 still travels the world supporting the humanitarian endeavors that have consumed his time in the decades since he left office, announced Wednesday he has cancer that has spread to other parts of his body.
A Georgia peanut farmer who had been a state senator and governor of Georgia for a single term before running for president, Carter ended up seeing his second term for president doomed by a number of foreign policy conflicts, most especially the Iran hostage crisis — losing in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
According to the Carter Center, he and Rosalynn volunteer one week a year for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that helps build and renovate homes for people in need.
Carter included his family's history of pancreatic cancer in that memoir, writing that his father, brother and two sisters all died of the disease and said the trend "concerned" the former president's doctors at Emory.
There was no record of another American family having lost four members to this disease, and since that time I have had regular X-rays, CAT scans, or blood analyses, with hope of early detection if I develop the same symptoms.
Sometimes the primary site can't be determined, so genetic analysis of the tumor might be done to see what mutations are driving it and what drugs might target those mutations.
The health care system's Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta touts its designation as a National Cancer Institute center and a recent U.S. News and World Report ranking among the top 25 cancer programs in the U.S. on its website.