You are SO cool Meek! Thank you for being you!
Posted on 04/07/2005 1:52:05 PM PDT by Hillary's Lovely Legs
Peter Jennings' lung cancer, which he disclosed Tuesday on ABC World News Tonight, may be in an advanced stage, a local expert on the disease says.
Most patients don't have their conditions diagnosed until the cancer is "so advanced that it can't be cured by surgery, and the patient has a poor chance of long-term survival," says Rita Axelrod of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital's Kimmel Center.
Details of Jennings' condition haven't been disclosed, but his hoarse voice and the fact that he isn't having surgery immediately "suggests he could be in at least stage III" of lung cancer, says Axelrod, director of pulmonary medical oncology.
In stage III, life expectancy for lung-cancer patients is 12 to 18 months, with less than 9 percent living for five years after their diagnosis, according to Axelrod.
Jennings, 66, World News anchor since 1983, shocked his ABC colleagues - and the broadcast world - by revealing in a staff e-mail Tuesday morning that the cancer had been diagnosed the previous day.
He said that he would begin outpatient chemotherapy next week, and that he would anchor when his health permits. Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson and Elizabeth Vargas of 20/20, among others, will fill in.
Jennings had planned to anchor World News Tuesday, but changed his mind late in the day due to a weak voice. Looking thin, he told viewers his news in a taped segment at the end of the broadcast.
Lung cancer is the leading cancer killer in the United States, with roughly four out of five people who have the disease dying within five years, Axelrod says.
The five leading causes: "Smoking, smoking, smoking, smoking and smoking."
Jennings, once described by a colleague as a "relentless smoker," says he quit 20 years ago but started again during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Nightline's Ted Koppel "was always goading Peter to quit," says Bob Zelnick, chairman of Boston University's journalism department and an ABC correspondent from '77 to '98.
"Sometimes Peter was like a kid, smoking in the bathroom or stealing a cigarette in the hallway," Zelnick says. "At one point, he went to a hypnotist to try to get control of it."
The traditional course of chemo for lung cancer is in cycles of three to four weeks, Axelrod says.
Some people "actually do very well. They're able to work and enjoy life... . They only need to take a few days off at a time."
Meanwhile, the abcnews.com message board has been flooded with good wishes for Jennings, ABC News' Jeffrey Schneider says.
Jennings joined Wednesday in World News' daily 9 a.m. editorial conference call and spoke throughout the day with exec producer Jon Banner, but he didn't anchor last night.
In the wings. Though ABC has no succession plan in place for Jennings, news division chief David Westin has the luxury of a deep bench.
Gibson, 62, and Vargas, 42, already designated subs, would be on any short list. Vargas is considered a fast-tracker at the network.
Other possibilities: chief White House correspondent Terry Moran and World News Saturday anchor Bob Woodruff.
If ABC decides to go with network evening news' first solo woman, GMA's Diane Sawyer, 59, is the logical choice, says CBS Evening News interim anchor Bob Schieffer.
"I have no idea whether she would want to leave GMA, but she's always been the one I would have thought was the strongest woman anchor right now in television, and she works for ABC."
Since Tom Brokaw stepped down Dec. 1, Jennings has brought World News close to the top-rated NBC Nightly News in the Nielsen wars. (CBS Evening News remains a distant third.)
With CBS's Dan Rather having stepped down March 9, ABC is perfectly poised to make a move. Its promo for Jennings says it all: "Trust is earned."
Stop it with your reasonable posts! If your not careful you will be thrown in with our "little click" or "cult" from the ping list. Common sense and factual information has no place in trying to make other people live better lives!
When he was talking about it on tv his voice was already rattley and he looked very drawn. Sorry to say, he doesn't look like he has long to go.
"registered charity number 1019719"
Nope, no self serving agenda in any of that information.
If smoking causes lung and heart disease, why is the highest per capita smoking population in the world also the lowest incidence per capita heart and lung disease population in the world?
"Just because something is legal doesn't make it right."
I have seen the same comments from the left with regards to religeon.
"Please don't sit down next to me in my favorite bar. I was there first; no smoking in my space."
When did you purchase that space from the bar owner? If you didn't how can you claim that bar stool as "your space"?
The useful idiots haven't caught on -- useful idiots never do. They're so gullible they even believe all drugs are created equal, and support the Clinton Administration's plan to lump tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin together in pursuit of an outcome-based addiction that recognizes no difference between a glassy-eyed degenerate with arms like sieves and a tired waitress on a cigarette break.
No difference, that is, except one: it's okay to hate the waitress.
Redirected emotion -- what psychoanalysis calls ''displacement'' --is the crowning achievement of anti-tobacco propaganda. A majority of Americans are now in the grip of this disorder, providing a perfect out for a government helpless against hard drugs. We can't invade the inner cities without starting a race war as well as a mutiny in our multiracial army. Opening fire on the Mexican border would provoke Hispanics, declaring war on supplier nations would provoke Asians, but bankrupting North Carolina will play in every focus group in Peoria.
My letter writers always demand to know why I keep smoking when I know it's bad for me. Aside from the simple fact that I enjoy it, I have three reasons: misanthropic, nostalgic, and subconscious.
On the misanthropic front, smoking gives me a perfect excuse not to go anywhere. People used to invite me to things, but now I've got them trained to leave me alone, and I owe it all to second-hand smoke.
On the nostalgia front, my childhood inured me against dire warnings about fatal illness. My grandmother belonged to the last generation of women who washed and dressed their own dead, and it left them with a morbid streak. They all knew, or claimed to know, someone whose hair ''turned white overnight,'' or someone who ''turned to stone'' (''It starts in the feet and works up''), or someone who died when ''it'' hit their heart -- ''it'' being an air bubble from hiccoughing, or a tiny sliver broken off from a toothpick that somehow ''got into their bloodstream.''
I was supposed to die from reading: ink, which was poison, would get into a finger cut and thence into my bloodstream. But Granny's best warning, recited whenever she saw me scratching, concerned shingles: ''When the two ends of the rash meet around your waist, your heart stops.'' If you grow up hearing things like that, nothing Henry Waxman says could possibly make an impression.
MY subconscious reason can't very well be subconscious or I wouldn't know about it. I just call it subconscious to confuse the buzzword-addicted crowd who claim smokers are ''in denial.'' Nothing upsets them more than a smoker who knows exactly what he's doing, so I made sure I nailed down my subconscious reason.
It's this: I think suicide qua suicide is weak and shameful, but maybe, if I just keep smoking, I can hasten my exit from this Walpurgisnacht called America and escape the mephitic cultural collapse that Nice-Nelly conservatism is powerless to stop.
This is probably wishful thinking in view of my family's medical history, but it points up another benefit of cigarettes we no longer hear about: consolation. Even the word is gone from the language now, but it was what came through in World War II newsreels showing weary soldiers and refugees lighting up. In their most despairing moments a cigarette was all they had, and increasingly I feel the same way.
Wow!
If the owner of that bar you frequent allows smoking on his property, I will partake whether you are sitting on the stool next to me or not. If you don't like it, convince the bar owner it is in his best interest to not allow the use of tobacco on his property or find another bar. Neither of us has any rights to dictate our preferences on that bar owner.
So, I will ask again, what claim do you have that it is "your space"?
Good article. Thanks.
"Pit bull attack."
No thanks, it would remind to much of threads such as these.
I am done responding to you, you are worthless, filthy, stinking, rotting, nasty, carcinogenic carcass who does nothing but roll cigarettes and hijacks decent thread with your venom.
You are the most obnoxious smoker I've seen in all my years online. You must be really in denial, and really scared to quit, if you have to keep throwing this stuff at us. If you really believe smoking is harmless, against all evidence and common sense, why be so militant about it? Just smoke, stay out of threads like this, and shut up.
Couldn't you justify practically any behavior using that line of reasoning?
It is up to the owner of the bar to set the smoking policy, not the customers. If a person doesn't want to be next to smoke then they shouldn't go to a bar that allows smoking.
I do wish clubs and bars would have better ventilation systems though.
I went from smoking to dipping which is 10 times worse. I'm screwed.
While smoking can cause various physical impairment, there is another "illness" I see in many people - that of frustration and anger at others for their perceived lifestyles.
People stand a better chance of living a long and healthy life if they calm down and accept others as they are with the hope that one day that person will seek out change on their own decision.
A good way to calm down is to check out why the anger occurs and do some self examination.
There is no more wasted emotion than uninvited anger at another person - especially a stranger.
If you really want to help, point those you are concerned about to positive information, offer support, stand back and let them make their own way.
Nagging never bought a person any satisfaction!
Heheh He must have one hellava monitor! :)
I checked and I don't have any cams around here where he can SEE me. LOL!
Sure takes all kinds, eh?
You are SO cool Meek! Thank you for being you!
hehe! Thanks. :)
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