Jimmy Carter to Publicly Discuss about...

 

NYT

ATLANTA — In an unusual step for a former president, Jimmy Carter is expected to discuss his health at a news conference here on Thursday, eight days after he said that he had cancer.

The appearance of Mr. Carter, 90, follows a written statement on Aug. 12 in which he announced that liver surgery had uncovered “cancer that now is in other parts of my body.” His announcement said that he would be treated by doctors at Emory University and that he would eventually make “a more complete public statement.”

Although historians said it was rare for a former president to hold a formal news conference about his health, Mr. Carter has occasionally spoken out about matters like his medical care and his family’s extensive history with pancreatic cancer, which killed his father and three siblings. (Mr. Carter has not disclosed whether his cancer affects his pancreas.) “It’s probably unusual for most former presidents, but not Jimmy Carter,” Mark K. Updegrove, the author of a 2006 book “Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House,” said of Mr. Carter’s decision to speak publicly. “I think he’s always been open and candid. This is just another example of that.”

The health of sitting presidents — and presidential candidates — is frequently a public matter, and the White House issues statements about routine medical appointments. After President Obama underwent a physical examination in 2014, for instance, officials released a two-page summary that included a blood pressure reading, laboratory results and a list of medications.

Sitting presidents, and sometimes first ladies, have also addressed their health in more camera-ready settings, as when Lyndon B. Johnson spoke to reporters from his hospital bed after throat surgery in 1966.

But former presidents have generally chosen to make written announcements about their health. Notably, Ronald Reagan in 1994 used a handwritten letter to disclose that he had Alzheimer’s disease. This summer, a spokesman for the elder President George Bush used written statements and Twitter to discuss Mr. Bush’s condition after a fall at his Maine home.

Before Mr. Carter’s announcement last week, his office had this year released at least two other written statements about his health. In May, officials said Mr. Carter was leaving Guyana early because he “was not feeling well,” and on Aug. 3, the Carter Center announced the elective procedure that ultimately revealed the cancer.

Mr. Carter’s appearance on Thursday could begin to fulfill the predictions of friends in Plains, the small southwest Georgia city where he lives, and other observers that the former president will use his diagnosis as a way to raise public awareness.

“Because of him facing cancer, he’s going to use this to help others,” Jan Williams, a longtime friend of the Carter family, said last week. “He will make it into a teaching experience for others to learn from.”

Mr. Carter appeared in Plains on Sunday, when he went to the Maranatha Baptist Church, the congregation where he has long led Sunday school classes. The church said that Mr. Carter is scheduled to teach this weekend.