How Bad Is McCain's Melanoma?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



How Bad Is McCain's Melanoma?

By Sam Stein, Huffington Post. Posted October 3, 2008.

The public deserves to know how advanced McCain's skin cancer is. If pilots have to release medical records, so should would-be presidents.



Over the last few weeks, the issues of John McCain's age and health have been pushed, with much resistance, back into the heart of the political discussion. Prompted in part by the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, the topic crested with the release of a political advertisement calling attention to McCain's history of skin cancer and the need for more information about his medical records.

Cable news stations were too skittish to run the spot, produced by Brave New PAC. CNN refused to air it, Fox's Bill O'Reilly called it shameful, and MSNBC, which initially aired the ad, reversed course and took it off the air.

All of which has come to the anger and befuddlement of Democrats as well as members of the medical community, both of whom ask a very basic question: what more important information is needed to elect a president other than his fitness for office?

"I don't see anything wrong with opening up the discussion," said Ronald Bronow, former chief of dermatology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "What we want to know is, what stage is this melanoma? Particularly with the prospect of the vice president becoming the president... If you are an objective physician, you have to be concerned about this."

With just weeks before election day, McCain's campaign says it has released all of the information needed to make a thorough assessment of his health, and then some. In late May, the Senator allowed the vetting of over 1,000 pages of his records that showed him in generally good condition despite having skin cancer eight years ago. But the process was far from transparent. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/101526/how_bad_is_mccain%27s_melanoma_/

[Historic NY]

1. 4 bouts with melanoma!! Thats a ticking time bomb period.

the average life expectancy rate for white males is 73.6 years give his crash injuries and his lifestyle thats pushing it. The actuarial life tables give him 76.279 yrs. I don't care how old his mother is. My grandmother lived to 98 yrs old and none of her children have made it that far, 4 died by 60, 2 in their 80's, 1 at 92 and the youngest is early 80's but unable to care for himself. What we haven't been told is scarier since the skirt is less than a heart beat away.

I wonder what the Vegas odds are on that.