Jimmy Carter at 100: A Legacy of Resilience and the Power of Immunotherapy

Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.), the thirty-ninth president of the United States, was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, and raised in the nearby community of Archery. His father, James Earl Carter, Sr., was a farmer and businessman, while his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, was a registered nurse.

Carter was educated in the public schools of Plains, then attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology before earning a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy, he served as a submariner in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He was chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program and was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he studied reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union College. He also served as the senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine.

In 1962, Carter was elected to the Georgia Senate. Although he lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, he won in his next attempt, taking office as Georgia’s 76th governor on January 12, 1971. He later became the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional and gubernatorial elections, solidifying his influence in state and national politics.

In August of 2015, he discovered that there was a melanoma lesion on his liver. Though this initial mass was removed, it was subsequently discovered to have spread to four different areas in his brain.

President Carter’s doctors took a bold initiative for treating his cancer. An immunotherapy treatment called pembrolizumab (Keytruda) had only earned U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2014, the year before President Carter’s diagnosis.

A mere few months after he revealed his melanoma diagnosis, President Carter was declared cancer-free in December 2015. This remarkable outcome demonstrated immunotherapy’s lifesaving potential but also gave hope to countless others who battle cancer around the world. The immunotherapy field has continued to blossom and can now target 29 types of cancer and treat 45 percent of all patients. In 2016, CRI launched its first immunotherapy summit, connecting cancer patients and caregivers with immunotherapy clinical trials and experts.

In connection to Carter’s birthday, medical community shared several posts on their social media accounts:

Vivek Subbiah

“Celebrating a Century of Resilience and Innovation! We are honored to wish President Jimmy Carter a very happy 100th birthday!

President Carter’s remarkable journey is a testament to resilience, hope, and the power of scientific advancement.

• In 2015, at the age of 91, Carter explained that a bad cold the previous May had led to a thorough physical, which by early August 2015 resulted in a diagnosis of melanoma, an extremely dangerous form of skin cancer. He had liver surgery earlier that month, and doctors identified four spots where the cancer had spread to his brain. If his diagnosis had come a few years earlier, he would have been given about six months to live.
• Thanks to Nobel Prize-winning innovations in #immunotherapy, President Carter and countless others have benefited from treatments that harness the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. These unprecedented developments are not just medical milestones; they are life-changing miracles that highlight the incredible potential of modern science. Today, the former president celebrates his 100th birthday, becoming a kind of poster child for immune therapy.
• As we celebrate President Carter’s milestone birthday, we also celebrate the relentless pursuit of knowledge and innovation that continues to save lives and inspire hope for a brighter, healthier future.

Here’s to you, President Carter, and to the brilliant minds pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in cancer treatment. Your life and courage are an inspiration to us all.

We need to challenge Standard-of-Care Paradigms to eradicate cancer.”

Tatiana Prowell

“JimmyCarter turns 100 today! What an incredible role model for boots-on-the-ground community service. Happy birthday, President Carter!”

Cancer Research Institute

“Former U.S. president, cancer survivor, and immunotherapy advocate, Jimmy Carter, celebrates his 100th birthday today! As a melanoma survivor who publicly announced his diagnosis and immunotherapy treatment in 2015, President Carter has defied all odds to become the first U.S. head of state to live to 100- serving as a testament to the power of immunotherapy.

Discover how President Carter ushered immunotherapy into the mainstream, and understand how his courage continues to cause positive ripple effects for cancer patients everywhere, in our new blog post:”

Mark Lewis

“Jimmy Carter lived through the history of modern medical oncology, from the discovery of chemotherapy (with post-WWI recognition that nitrogen mustards destroyed lymphatic tissue & bone marrow) to the far more elegant mechanism of immunotherapy (which sustained him in his 90s)”

AACR

“For President Carter’s 100th birthday, AACR Fellows and Board member Jedd Wolchok talked to People magazine about the breakthrough immunotherapy treatment that saved his life after his metastatic melanoma diagnosis in 2015.”

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