In Last Stages of Cancer Battle, Political Commentator Says Goodbye in Public Letter

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CONSERVATIVE commentator and author Charles Krauthammer, a regular guest on Fox News and a syndicated columnist in The Washington Post for nearly 35 years, announced June 8 in a public letter that he was in the last stages of advanced cancer, with just a few weeks to live. He died on June 21.

The 68-year-old explained that he’d had a tumor removed from his abdomen, followed by complications and then the return of aggressive cancer. He did not specify its subtype.

“My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live,” he wrote. “This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”

Krauthammer thanked his doctors, caregivers, friends, colleagues, readers and viewers for the support and meaning they brought to his life. “I leave this life with no regrets,” wrote the married father of one. “It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

After attending McGill and Oxford universities, Krauthammer graduated from Harvard Medical School and became boardcertified in psychiatry. A diving accident during his time as a medical student left him paralyzed, but he eventually regained the use of his upper body, according to the website IMDb.

Krauthammer quit medical practice in 1978 to help the Carter administration with psychiatric research planning, the Washington Speakers Bureau reports. He was a speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980 and began writing for The New Republic the following year.

From 2001 to 2006, Krauthammer served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, according to the bureau. President of The Krauthammer Foundation, he also chaired Pro Musica Hebraica, an organization that recovers and performs lost classical Jewish music, and belonged to Chess Journalists of America.