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I participated today in an interview with Dr. Elmer Huerta, a highly respected medical oncologist and public health expert, on Atlanta's Radio Información 1310, a Spanish-language community station. Dr. Huerta is not an ideologue, is not a political partisan, and was the first Latino to head the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Huerta said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's cancer would be classified as terminal by medical experts. He said that after four surgeries, radiation therapy and repeated rounds of chemotherapy, there is no known medical treatment that could kill the cancer in Chavez's pelvic region without killing the patient. In addition, he said the President's tracheotomy very likely was done to put Chavez on a mechanical ventilator, to keep him from dying of respiratory failure, and that is a very grave sign.
In relation to the announcement today that Chavez was receiving more chemotherapy, Dr. Huerta said that neither Chávez nor anyone else would be able to survive the amounts and potency of the chemical agents required to kill this cancer, explaining that in addition to curative therapies, medical oncologists also prescribe palliative chemotherapy for people with terminal cancer, not to wipe out the cancer but to slow it or stop it from spreading very aggressively
Dr. Huerta refused to speculate (on or off the air) about how much time President Chávez might have left. He also refused to rule out a "miraculous" cure, but said, as a matter of medical science, Chavez's cancer had to be considered terminal.
If Dr. Huerta's analysis of the very limited information that is publicly available on President Chavez's health is correct, the Bolivarian revolution, which has been the cornerstone of the so-called "pink tide" in Latin America, will soon face its greatest challenge.
Joaquín ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
