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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.
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The gist of the critique is that McCain's cancer was more advanced than his physicians concluded and that the chance of recurrence is consequently higher. Melanoma that spreads widely through the body -- "metastasizes," in medical parlance -- is rapidly fatal.
The effort to learn more about McCain's health gained steam after he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. More than 2,700 physicians signed a full-page ad in the New York Times on Oct. 3 calling for a "full, public release" of the candidate's medical records. Others urged that microscopic slides of tissue removed before and during his operation be made available for review by independent pathologists.
"Voters need to know who is most likely to be running the country in 2010 if Senator McCain is elected in 2008," Wendy Epstein, a New York dermatologist and Obama supporter, wrote in an eight-page analysis of the senator's risk circulating on the Internet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101702825.html?hpid=topnews