by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Rush has announced that he has an advanced form of lung cancer and is taking some time off his show for treatment.
There’s no real way around the outcome in situations like this. While he’s got more money than God, and will be spending as much of it (whether through whatever insurance he bought or just with cash) the facts are that “advanced” lung cancer is, in nearly all cases, terminal.
He didn’t give a stage, but let’s face it — “advanced” means metastatic, and there’s really no way around the expected outcome. Then again we all die — it is simply a matter of “of what” and “when”, not if.
Rush, being 69 and a smoker for a long time — he claims he quit in 2010 using eCigs as a nicotine replacement — certainly won’t be the first or last person to have this outcome. Reality is this — he was a smoker and smoking is pretty-much the way most people get lung cancer. Not everyone, mind you — but most. Of course there’s the counter-factual (my late Aunt who smoked like a damned chimney, lived to nearly 100, and it never got her) but the odds are the odds.