Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Gets Grim Diagnosis

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was diagnosed with cancer after having liver surgery, he announced Wednesday on The Carter Center Website.

Carter’s full statement:

Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body. I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare. A more complete public statement will be made when facts are known, possibly next week.

On August 3, Carter had surgery to remove what the center called a “small mass in his liver.” At the time, the center said that “the prognosis is excellent for a full recovery.”

Carter, 90, served as the 39th president, from 1977 to 1981, and has been referred to, even among many of his detractors, as perhaps the most publicly active U.S. president in history.

Post-presidency, he has been best known for his worldwide philanthropic efforts.

In 1984, he started the Carter Center to advance human rights worldwide, focused, as its website points out, on resolving violent conflicts, avancing democracy and human rights, preventing diseases, and improving mental health care.”

Carter has traveled worldwide negotiating peace deals and overseeing elections.

Along with his wife, Rosalynn, he is heavily involved in Habitat For Humanity. For one week a year, the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project builds and improves homes while raising awareness for affordable housing.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

“We are praying for you, President #JimmyCarter,” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center said on Twitter. “You are a champion for the global community. Thank you. @CarterCenter.”

“Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers for my grandfather and grandmother,” Jason Carter, Jimmy’s grandson and former Georgia state senator said on Twitter. “I will pass them along!”

As president, Carter is most well-known for pardoning Vietnam War draft evaders and his negotiation of the Iran hostage crisis, where 52 U.S. diplomats were held for 444 days at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

A mission by Carter to rescue the hostages resulted in the death of eight U.S. soldiers and an Iranian civilian. The hostages were eventually released just minutes after Ronald Reagan took office.

Carter is the second-oldest living president, behind George H.W. Bush.

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