Christopher Hitchens appeared on “Anderson Cooper 360” in his first TV appearance since his diagnosis with esophageal cancer. Hitchens, whose father died at 79 of the same disease, said that even he has wondered, “Why me?”
“You can’t avoid the question however stoic you are, you can only bat it away as a silly one,” he said. “Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.”
“You said you burned the candle at both ends,” Cooper said.
“And it gave a lovely light,” Hitchens responded.
“Do you think part of that way you lived is responsible for this?”
“It would be very idle to deny it, and I might as well say to anyone watching, if you can hold it down on the smokes and the cocktails you may be well advised to do so,” Hitchens said.
(Source: HuffingtonPost.com and CNN)
