Questions Linger About McCain's Prognosis After Skin Cancer

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2008

In May, the presidential campaign of 72-year-old cancer survivor John McCain tried to put to rest doubts about his health by allowing a few reporters to inspect his medical records, but the effort has failed to quell questions about his odds of surviving an eight-year tenure in the White House.

One loosely organized group of physicians has been claiming in Web-based videos, op-ed columns and newspaper ads that McCain's risk of dying from a recurrence of the skin cancer he had treated eight years ago may be as high as 60 percent.

However, data on cancer survival rates compiled by the federal government suggest that people in McCain's situation have no more than a 10 percent chance of dying from melanoma over the next decade.

The key to the favorable prognosis is that McCain has already survived eight years without a recurrence. Even if the cancer was more serious in 2000 than his doctors judged, the fact that he is alive today suggests it had not spread by the time it was removed on Aug. 19, 2000, at the Mayo Clinic's campus in Scottsdale, Ariz.

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