Jimmy Carters Speaks Out About P.C in his New Book

BEYOND THE WHITE HOUSE: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope

In his new book, BEYOND THE WHITE HOUSE: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope, President Jimmy Carter shares his personal experience with pancreatic cancer, including his work with The Lustgarten Foundation:

"I never told the others that I was undergoing experimental medical procedures because of my high risk of cancer.  My father had died of pancreatic cancer in his late fifties, and in the 1980s my two sisters, my brother, and my mother all succumbed to cancer, three of the cases proven to be in the pancreas.  Probably because I was a famous person, this previously unknown familial pattern aroused great interest in the medical community, and a worldwide search was mounted for other similar families.  (One was found in Japan with three deaths from cancer of the pancreas.) Since only about one person in ten thousand dies from this disease in the United States, the high incidence in our family defied mathematical odds- unless there was a genetic or familial cause.  I agreed to undergo definitive physical examinations every three months in the hope that they might help lead to better information about the cause of early detection of pancreatic cancer.

In 1999 a prominent television executive named Marc Lustgarten died from pancreatic cancer, and a foundation was established bearing his name to promote research on and public awareness of the disease.  I have helped the foundation with public service media spots, and recently they announced that medical scientists supported by them have discovered the first gene associated with cancer of the pancreas.  So far, CAT and MRI scans and blood tests have not revealed that I have a problem.  The only difference between me and other members of my family is that all of them smoked cigarettes."