A thank you to President Jimmy Carter

As an immunologic cancer treatment, Keytruda (pembrolizumab) offers hope to patients, such as former President Carter, who has metastatic melanoma.

Carter said despite undergoing treatment, he now plans to teach his regular Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga., this weekend. More radiation treatment could be scheduled if needed.

Discussing his future, Carter said, “I’m an acquiescent and cooperating patient, and within the bounds of my judgement, I will do what the doctors recommend to extend my life as much as possible”.

“Most melanomas occur on the skin, about 95 percent of them”, and Carter’s cancer probably originated there even though no skin tumor may be apparent now, said Dr. Anna Pavlick, co-director of the melanoma program at NYU’s Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center.

The treatment strategy being applied to former President Carter involves targeting the brain lesions that are visible, while allowing the immune system, which has been “turned on” by Keytruda, to scavenge the rest.

Like much of his presidency, the Camp David negotiations were a precursor for Carter’s work at the Carter Center, which has become as important in the pursuit of peace as any entity in the world. The key immune system cells needed to attack the tumor can get into the brain, so the treatment gives Carter a fighting chance, he said. “And again President Carter certainly had that in his conference today, so that’s something we certainly see in terms of patients really ready to take on what’s next”.

Obama also called to wish him well, as did former President Bill Clinton and current Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, Carter said. “The goal of therapy is to control it, not cure it”. “I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence”.

“I just thought I had a few weeks left, but I was surprisingly at ease”. However, having watched Carter’s press conference, we should be thinking not about trading invective, but learning from the model of Jimmy Carter about how to be a better participant in and contributor to society, community, and family. But he wanted to complete a book tour before the surgery, and only told others about the diagnosis once it was certain.

Carter, however, is set to benefit from new treatments designed to fight the cancer including a newly approved drug from Merck and a highly targeted form of radiation treatment.

Carter served in submarines in the Navy and spent years as a peanut farmer before running for office, becoming a state senator and Georgia governor.