Washington, Aug 24 (EFE).- Prominent US Sen. John McCain has decided to stop undergoing treatment for the aggressive form of brain cancer that has sidelined him from politics in recent months, his family said Friday.
“With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment,” the family of the Republican senator and 2000 and 2008 presidential candidate said in a statement.
The statement noted that last summer McCain shared the news that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma and that the prognosis was serious.
“In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict,” it added.
McCain, now 81, had been receiving treatment in his home state of Arizona, although he continued his legislative work for months after his diagnosis.
The senator, who has been a member of the Senate since 1987 and chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee since 2015, is well-known for his military service in the Vietnam War and particularly for having been held prisoner for five years and tortured by his captors.
In May, the New York Times reported that those close to McCain have told the White House that Vice President Mike Pence will be welcome to attend the senator’s funeral but that President Donald Trump will not be.
In an opinion column that month, NYT columnist Frank Bruni wrote that “it’s beyond strange for a president to be asked to stay away from a fellow party member’s funeral.”
During his campaign, Trump mocked McCain’s service in Vietnam, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured.”
The two men’s relationship has remained rocky since the real estate mogul’s surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election.
One of the most tense episodes came in July of last year, when McCain – shortly after making public his brain cancer diagnosis – joined just two other GOP colleagues in voting against a Republican-proposed bill that would have repealed certain aspects of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, a US health-care overhaul popularly known as “Obamacare.”