Even if they have seen the individual, it would be unprofessional to discuss the case without the patient's explicit permission. So you are unlikely to get much informed medical comment in this country on what killed the Venezuelan leader. But that type of constraint hasn't stopped speculation in the international political community.
In some respects, it's really not all that surprising we know so little about the type of cancer that took Chavez's life. Some people consider a medical diagnosis to be a private matter — even if the individual is a public figure. We were informed that Layton had been originally treated for prostate cancer.
The cancer came back — but what form the cancer finally took has not been disclosed. Did it metastasize to the surrounding area to become another type of cancer? We just don't know.
Treated for cancer himself last year, he was speaking the day after the Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was diagnosed with the condition - or misdiagnosed, as it turned out.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, 64, had treatment for lymphoma in Her predecessor, Lula da Silva, 66, has been treated for throat cancer.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, 60, was diagnosed with lymphoma in August but is now in remission after chemotherapy. This made five leaders out of a total of 24 Latin American countries, at the time of Mr Chavez's speech, although it became clear after an operation this month that President Fernandez was suffering from something else entirely.
President Chavez stressed that he was thinking aloud rather than making "rash accusations". The US State Department described his comments as "horrific and reprehensible". But was he right that such a concentration of cancer is statistically improbable? Cancer is a very common disease, points out Eduardo Cazap, an Argentinian doctor and the president of the Union for International Cancer Control, based in Geneva.
The conspiracy angle has not caught fire. The death of Chavez did not really rally the left outside of his home base.
In Latin America, Lula was seen as the more charismatic, if not more practical leader of South America. Chavez was a firebrand, stoking Cold War rhetoric with Washington. As Latin American politics goes, Chavez was the anti-American. So it is not surprising that here at home, the harshest critics of good, old fashion Yankee imperialism came out Wednesday in notes circulating in email in-boxes nationwide that Chavez may have been the victim of a U.
And while the left in the United States send out Viva Chavez, Viva La Revolucion kudos to the most reviled leader in Washington other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the right wing, in their usual lust for kindness, is busy expression their sheer joy that the man is gone. But we should have. Tea Party Republicans called him a tyrant, expressed relief that he was no longer a "force" to reckon with. Force quotes are mine, not his. Because, really, was Chavez a force to reckon with anywhere outside of Venezuela?
Meanwhile, there is a relative calm in Venezuela according to press reports and investment sources on the ground in Caracas. The market expects Maduro to be elected within 30 days. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here.
More From Forbes. Nov 8, , am EST.
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