{"id":13848,"date":"2024-01-10T13:06:08","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T13:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/10\/pentagon-slammed-for-calling-lloyd-austins-surgery-to-remove-cancer-elective-arguing-semantics\/"},"modified":"2024-01-10T13:06:08","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T13:06:08","slug":"pentagon-slammed-for-calling-lloyd-austins-surgery-to-remove-cancer-elective-arguing-semantics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/10\/pentagon-slammed-for-calling-lloyd-austins-surgery-to-remove-cancer-elective-arguing-semantics\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon slammed for calling Lloyd Austin\u2019s surgery to remove cancer \u2018elective\u2019: \u2018Arguing semantics\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
Read this article for free!<\/div>\n
Plus get unlimited access to thousands of articles, videos and more with your free account!<\/div>\n
Please enter a valid email address.<\/span><\/div>\n
By entering your email, you are agreeing to Fox News Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive. To access the content, check your email and follow the instructions provided.\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Doctors are calling out the Pentagon for calling Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin\u2019s recent medical procedure to treat prostate cancer an \u2018elective\u2019 surgery,\u2019 saying that characterization is misleading.<\/p>\n

The 70-year-old Defense secretary was hospitalized on Jan. 1 for complications from what officials are still calling an \u2018elective\u2019 medical procedure that was later revealed to be related to prostate cancer. The Pentagon chief\u2019s cancer diagnosis was made public Tuesday. The administration had previously only disclosed on Friday that Austin had been hospitalized earlier that week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Biden administration has taken heat for its handling of Austin\u2019s absence, particularly on the issue of transparency, and, now, its facing backlash for telling the public last week when details of Austin\u2019s condition were scarce that he had undergone an \u2018elective\u2019 surgery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking Tuesday with Fox News Digital, Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel, said Austin\u2019s prostatectomy is \u2018technically an elective surgery,\u2019 but that characterization is misleading.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Elective is divided into emergency and non-emergency. We take elective mostly to mean a nose job and so the word elective is misleading. This is prostate cancer,\u2019 Siegel said. \u2018Not all prostate cancer is operated on, but they decided to take it out because they thought it was aggressive-probably from the biopsy,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Siegel said it is misleading to call Austin\u2019s prostate cancer surgery a minimally invasive surgery.<\/p>\n

\u2018Even though the da Vinci robot is technically considered minimally invasive surgery, it implies that it\u2019s a small operation. It would be better to define Austin\u2019s surgery as robotic prostate surgery.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018But going under anesthesia and general surgery is not a walk in the park that needs to be taken very seriously, even if our technology has improved greatly,\u2019 Siegel said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor and radiologist, told Fox News Digital that she would not consider a cancer surgery to be elective.<\/p>\n

\u2018Anyone would think that cancer treatment is not elective, but as we learned during COVID, the definition of elective is very different from a physician or even a patient\u2019s perspective, Dr. Saphier said. \u2018Cancer surgeries were delayed during the early stages of COVID when all elective cases were put on hold.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0I would not consider a cancer surgery to be elective.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Dr. Nicole Saphier, Fox News contributor and Radiologist<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Ultimately, cancer is life-threatening, so it is really arguing semantics whether you want to call cancer treatment, elective or not,\u2019 she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018My personal opinion as a cancer specialist and human, I would not consider a cancer surgery to be elective, but the reality is, his prostate cancer was not immediately life-threatening at the moment,\u2019 Dr. Saphier said. \u2018Therefore, he was able to be scheduled on an outpatient, non-emergency basis.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder defended the use of \u2018elective surgery\u2019 in a Tuesday press briefing, deferring to medical professionals.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m going to defer to medical officials on this,\u2019 Ryder said. \u2018Again, we released this information as soon as we had it. And so, again, I\u2019m going to refer back to the statement and, you know, going forward, we will use that as the baseline in terms of describing it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ryder said that Austin\u2019s doctor previously defined his surgery as elective and the initial statement from the Pentagon was written after consulting his doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.<\/p>\n

\u2018So to my knowledge, that initial statement was coordinated in consultation with his doctors,\u2019 Ryder said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following Austin\u2019s surgery, he was hospitalized following \u2018complications,\u2019 Ryder said on Friday, Jan. 5.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers on Tuesday announced a formal inquiry into the lack of transparency surrounding Austin\u2019s hospitalization.<\/p>\n

\u2018With wars in Ukraine and Israel, the idea that the White House and even your own Deputy did not understand the nature of your condition is patently unacceptable,\u2019 Rogers wrote in a letter to Austin on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Seigel said that Austin should use this experience as a \u2018great teaching moment\u2019 and bring public awareness to prostate cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018This should have been a great teaching moment and still could be for Black Americans, given the fact that they have 2.5 times greater risk of prostate cancer and 2.5 greater chances of dying,\u2019 Siegel said.<\/p>\n

\u2018I would have liked to see the defense secretary come out for public awareness rather than hide\u2013 and he still could,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Austin was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Dec. 22 and underwent surgery to treat the cancer. He developed the infection a week later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Biden and other senior administration officials were not told for days about his hospitalization or his cancer.<\/p>\n

According to the doctors, the cancer was detected when Austin had a regular screening in early December.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They said his prostate cancer was detected early, and his prognosis was excellent.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read this article for free! Plus get unlimited access to thousands of articles, videos and more with your free account! Please enter a valid email address. By entering your email, you are agreeing to Fox News Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive. To access the content, check your <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}