Former President Carter Says He’s Cancer Free

“The church, everybody here, just erupted in applause”, she added. Now after going through radiation treatment to attack the melanoma spots that were found on his brain, it appears that Carter is winning the battle. “The first time I went for an MRI of my brain, the four places were still there but they were responding to the treatment”, he said in a video posted by NBC News.

The former Democratic president won plaudits when he discussed his illness publicly in August, sounding serene and in high spirits, smiling often and joking with reporters in a thick Georgia drawl. He promised, however, to keep receiving regular treatments for his melanoma.

His doctors will continue to scan Carter’s body for any new cancer cell, a procedure typically repeated every three months for the first year or two after a patient’s test results show no cancer, Johnson said. “I knew he wasn’t really human”, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Keytruda is an antibody created to disable the protein PD-1 so it can not do its job of keeping the immune system in check; this allows T cells to become more active in recognizing and fighting cancer cells. At the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, Leonard Saltz, MD, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NY, said the total cost to treat all metastatic cancer patients in the United States would be an “unsustainable” $174 billion per year.

Carter’s grandson, James, tweeted “Victory!” shortly after the announcement. Carter disclosed weeks later the cancer had spread to his brain, but still said he expected a full recovery.

His classes had been crowded ever since he announced his cancer this summer.

Carter – a father of four, grandfather of 12 and great-grandfather of 10 – served as the 39th president for one term between 1977 and 1981.

He was recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless efforts to promote social and economic justice.