According to ABC News, Former United States President Jimmy Carter no longer needs cancer treatment, as it would seem the cancer treatments were successful.
Advertisement
He announced the good news at the beginning of his Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, a few months after he revealed he was cancer-free.
“President Carter said he did not need any more treatments, which he had August 2015 through February 2016, but will continue scans and resume treatment if necessary”, Carter Center director of communications Deanna Congileo wrote in an email.
The former president announced in August that he had a mass removed from his liver, which turned out to be melanoma – a unsafe form of skin cancer.
At the time, Mr Carter said he would continue to receive regular doses of pembrolizumab, a new treatment that is part of a promising class of drugs that harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer.
The diagnosis from December seemed to stick and Carter was informed his cancer was gone and that he would no longer need cancer treatments which he promptly shared with his Sunday school class this morning on the topic of humility. He notes that roughly 30 percent of patients see shrinkage of cancer using the drugs while only 5 percent experience complete remission like Carter.
On Sunday, the former president said his doctors had told him he does not need to have any more treatments.
Jill Stuckey, a Maranatha Baptist Church member, said in a phone interview that Carter’s updates have become ‘a pattern for our church’. At the time, Carter told the group that he planned to continue receiving doses of Keytruda every three weeks. He also continued work at the Carter Center, the human rights organization he founded after leaving the White House, contrary to his initial plans to step back during treatment.
Advertisement
“When you have a drug that’s working to keep cancer at bay, it’s a hard decision to stop”, Turnham, who is not involved with Carter’s treatment, said.
