ATLANTA-Former President Jimmy Carter said in a brief statement Sunday that his latest brain scan showed no signs of cancer.
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It was not immediately known when the scan took place, or when Carter received the news from his grandfather.
One of his friends and parishioners told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he made the announcement towards the beginning of the Sunday school class he leads at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Jimmy Carter’s cancer is gone, the former president announced on Sunday.
Mr Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, revealed his illness in August.
While about 30 percent of patients treated with the drug experience significant shrinkage of their cancer, only approximately 5 percent experience complete remission, said Dr. Marc Ernstoff, director of the melanoma program at the Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute in Ohio. I have watched my own family members undergo cancer treatment, and each time it is a heartbreaking experience.
Carter has said in interviews that he lost about five pounds, but otherwise tolerated the treatments well. The Food and Drug Administration rapidly approved the breakthrough drug in 2014 for patients with advanced melanoma who have exhausted other therapies, saying it represented a substantial improvement over existing treatments.
Carter, 91, had elective surgery in August when doctors discovered a small mass in his liver.
After treatment, better news came to the congregation.
Carter will continue to receive the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab every three weeks.
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In that sense, he said, Carter’s age actually might have worked in his favour. “One hopes that by using immunotherapy the body can respond to whatever happens but cancer cells are clever and can develop workarounds for the various treatments”. “We’re unleashing the immune system with these drugs”, by removing the molecules that block it, “but there has to be an immune system to unleash, an immune system that’s ready to attack the cancer”.
