Jimmy Carter Says He’s Cancer

Mr. Carter told the Marantha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, according to a statement from his office, “when I went this week, they didn’t find any cancer at all”.

“The first time I went for an MRI the four places were still there but they were responding to the treatment”, Carter said on video posted online by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

In August, the 91-year-old revealed that doctors had found four small melanoma lesions on his brain as well as one on his liver.

Carter was diagnosed with advanced stage melanoma around May 2015.

“If Carter is indeed cancer-free, his response to Keytruda has been better than that of most patients in the clinical trial that led the FDA to approve the drug”. The interaction between the two genes lets some tumors escape detection and destruction by immune system cells. “I am perfectly at ease with whatever comes”, said Mr. Carter during a news conference”. He said after months of treatment, his cancer is gone.

Not seeing any cancer on imaging tests is promising, but a physician can not be 100% certain that means a cancer will not return. Jill Stuckey, a church member who helps organize Carter’s popular lessons, said in a phone interview that Carter told the congregation a brain scan this week showed no cancer. “There’s no question it’s very positive”, Flaherty said of Carter’s scan.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter has apparently been given an incredible last-minute reprieve from what appeared to be an altogether hopeless case of melanoma. Keytruda, Merck’s brand name for pembrolizumab approved by the FDA in 2014, costs $12,500 per patient per month, or $150,000 a year.

“I haven’t been uncomfortable or ill after the treatments were over”, he said.

Fans of the former president have been making pilgrimages from across the country to see him teach since he announced that he was being treated for melanoma. At President Carter’s age, it’s very likely he’s going to enjoy an excellent quality of life.