Aretha Franklin Has Pancreatic Cancer

After undergoing surgery last week, Aretha Franklin, 68, has revealed that she’s suffering from pancreatic cancer. The prognosis for the disease—which took Patrick Swayze’s life, but which Steve Jobs has thus far survived—is uniquely dim. "It has the worst prognosis of any major human malignancy," said one doctor familiar with the disease. "It is the most dreaded cancer to get." Those diagnosed with the disease have a 5 percent chance of living five years, and of those, 85 percent are not candidates for surgery. But Franklin’s surgery reportedly went well, she said, thanking the "superb doctors and nurses who were blessed by all the prayers of the city and the country."