Health
Veteran and author Jack Carr on finding 'mission and passion' when navigating key life transitions
Bestselling author Jack Carr, a former Navy SEAL sniper and military leader, is right now traveling the country to discuss his new nonfiction book, “Targeted: The 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing,” the first in a new series about key terror events around the globe.
For him, the new book — a nonfiction work of military history — is the result of the highly focused new mission he took on after leaving the world of U.S. Special Forces and matching this new mission in life with a longtime passion for writing.
Carr spent 20 years on SEAL teams.
EXCLUSIVE: BESTSELLING AUTHOR JACK CARR SHARES EXCERPT FROM ‘BEIRUT,’ HIS NEW NONFICTION BOOK ON TERROR
The veteran’s turn to literary endeavors produced novels featuring James Reece, his protagonist, first in “The Terminal List” and then in such New York Times bestselling novels as “True Believer,” “Savage Son,” “The Devil’s Hand,” “In the Blood,” “Only the Dead” and more.
But none of this was a snap. It took mental focus, a key set of decisions and perseverance, he shared. (See the video at the top of this article.)
Jack Carr spent 20 years on SEAL teams — and spoke to Fox News Digital about how he forged a new path in life once he stepped away from military work, something that is hard for many to do and navigate, he said. (Jack Carr)
With Veterans Day already on the horizon this fall, Carr spoke to Fox News Digial in an on-camera interview about the importance for anyone moving from the military world to the civilian to chart a new course — and how he was able to carve his own meaningful path.
As a Navy SEAL Task Unit commander and sniper, Carr had deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I can only talk from my own experience,” he said. “But I recognized as I was getting ready to leave the SEAL teams that it was a hard place to leave.”
“They can have a hard time leaving this foundation.”
He said, “Meaning, someone has put in their papers to [move] out [of Special Forces] or move into the private sector. And they can have a hard time leaving this foundation.”
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“It was almost like a foundation of cement and their feet were on it and it was drying all around them — and they couldn’t move forward,” he said. “They couldn’t build on that foundation because they were stuck in it because it was just so powerful.”
Carr said, “This was five years or 10 years or 15 or 20 — however long they’d spent in the military in Special Operations. It was a very powerful few years, and it’s hard to move on from something like that.”
Carr, at left, said he’d read many thrillers during his formative years by such authors as Tom Clancy, right, as well as Louis L’Amour, David Morrell, Nelson de Mille and others. They “were my professors in the art of storytelling,” he told Fox News Digital — giving him a foundation for a new phase of life. (Jack Carr; Getty Images)
The bestselling author noted, “I think people in professional sports deal with it. People in amateur sports deal with it. College athletes, too. You know, anybody making a transition in life, [after the] death of a loved one, divorce, a new job — it can be anything.”
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He added, “But my experience just happens to be in the SEAL teams. So for me, it was important to identify a mission going forward and a purpose going forward.”
“It was important to identify a mission going forward and a purpose going forward.”
Said Carr, “For me, my mission is taking care of my family.”
He told Fox News Digital, “We have a middle child with really severe special needs. He needs 24/7 full-time care forever. So my mission was kind of handed to me.”
Carr’s newest book is his first nonfiction entry, “Targeted: Beirut,” published this month. (Mike Stoner Photography; Jack Carr/Simon & Schuster; iStock)
He continued, “I knew that I loved writing. I loved telling stories. I’d trained myself from an early age, inadvertently, just from the fan perspective, by reading David Morrell and Nelson de Mille and Tom Clancy and … all these guys who were essentially giants in the thriller space back when I was growing up in my formative years.”
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He said that he’d given himself “this education, and those were my professors in the art of storytelling.”
It was critical, Carr said, to “identify that mission and identify a passion — [for me], writing and then the mission, taking care of the family, and then combining those two.”
Carr during his years of military service to the United States of America. (Simon & Schuster)
So “that passion, that mission, can give you purpose going forward.”
He said, “It’s going to be different for everyone. But for me, it was very important, too, because I recognized how difficult it was to leave this organization that I was in and turn that page.”
And so “for me, mission and passion combined — for me, anyway. I’m not saying it’s going to work for everybody.”
But “that was a very natural thing for me to do.”
“And it has given me purpose in life going forward.”
Brittany Kasko of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
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A new injectable therapy is showing positive results in reducing melanoma throughout a five-year period.
The personalized mRNA cancer therapy, called intismeran autogene, combined with the cancer immunotherapy drug KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), is a collaboration between Merck and Moderna.
The results from the phase 2b KEYNOTE-942 study were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago on May 27.
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After about a five-year follow-up, the combo drug was found to reduce the risk of melanoma recurrence or death by 49% compared to pembrolizumab alone.
The researchers analyzed data from 157 patients with high-risk stage 3 and 4 melanoma whose cancer had been removed via surgery. The participants were split into two groups — one received the combo therapy and the other only received pembrolizumab, according to a press release.
The therapy was found to reduce the risk of melanoma recurrence or death by 49% compared to pembrolizumab alone after a five-year follow-up. (iStock)
The findings revealed that the combination group saw benefits that were “sustained and durable over time.”
Intismeran autogene is designed using mutations identified in a patient’s own tumor, with the intention of teaching the immune system what the cancer looks like so that it can recognize and attack it.
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According to the researchers, intismeran is “well-tolerated” with a “manageable” safety profile.
The most commonly cited side effects of the personalized mRNA vaccine plus KEYTRUDA were fatigue, injection-site pain, chills, fever and headache. The researchers reported no new long-term safety concerns and no severe vaccine-related adverse events.
The combination therapy is currently being evaluated in a phase 3 study — the final confirmation stage.
Patients with late-stage melanoma have a “significant risk” of cancer recurrence, according to an expert. (iStock)
In a Merck press release from January, Kyle Holen, MD, Moderna’s senior vice president and head of development, oncology and therapeutics, noted that this data highlights the “potential of a prolonged benefit … in patients with resected high-risk melanoma.”
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“We continue to invest in our platform in oncology because of encouraging outcomes like these, which illustrate mRNA’s potential in cancer care,” he said.
Dr. Marjorie Green, senior vice president and head of oncology, global clinical development at Merck Research Laboratories, also commented that for many patients with stage 3 or 4 melanoma, there is a “significant risk of recurrence following surgery.”
Researchers confirmed that the combination therapy is currently being evaluated in a phase 3 study. (iStock)
“As such, demonstrating the longer-term potential of intismeran autogene and KEYTRUDA to reduce the risk of recurrence for certain patients with melanoma is a meaningful milestone,” she said.
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The company cited encouraging five-year follow-up data and pointed to upcoming late-stage INTerpath trial results with Moderna in several hard-to-treat cancers.
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An accidental lab discovery has opened the door to entirely new ways of preventing the flu.
While investigating how influenza replicates, researchers discovered that different flu strains use completely different strategies to infiltrate human cells, SWNS reported.
By targeting the specific molecules the viruses rely on, scientists found that they could block them from entering new cells and halt their replication altogether.
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Researchers say these “fundamental insights” into seasonal influenza highlight a clear path toward developing better preventive medications.
“The hope is that fundamental, curiosity-based research like this helps to pave the way for novel strategies to treat and prevent influenza infections,” principal investigator Dr. Emily Bruce, from the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, said in the SWNS report.
While investigating how influenza replicates, researchers discovered that different flu strains use completely different strategies to infiltrate human cells. (iStock)
While several flu strains cause illness, H1N1 and H3N2 influenza A viruses are the most common. However, current flu tests cannot differentiate between them, and clinical treatments are identical for both.
Although vaccines and antivirals are available, Bruce noted a “dire” need for better medications to stop the virus from spreading cell to xxcell.
“You don’t get sick when a virus is in one cell,” he noted. “You get sick because a virus replicates itself and goes into many more cells.”
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The study, which was published in The Journal of Virology, originally aimed to map how viral RNA segments are transported within cells to create new viral particles.
The team used H1N1 and H3N2 viruses isolated from the nasal passages of positive patients in 2022.
Clinical treatments remain identical for both primary strains of the flu virus. (iStock)
During the investigation, the team unexpectedly stumbled upon a cellular pathway that blocked the virus from entering lung cells, SWNS reported.
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The data revealed that when a specific human protein called Rab11B was depleted, H3N2 viruses failed to enter human lung cells. H1N1 viruses were completely unaffected.
Using reverse genetics, the team mapped this defect and uncovered a brand-new, H3N2-specific role for Rab11B during viral entry.
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This discovery challenged the scientific assumption that all flu viruses enter cells the same way.
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“Viruses are like pirates from different countries hijacking someone’s ship,” Bruce said. “Different viruses, like different types of pirates, use different methods to get onboard.”
This discovery challenged the scientific assumption that all flu viruses enter cells the same way. (iStock)
“We had previously thought that all flu viruses used the same way to get into a cell, but we discovered that this is not true,” she went on. “H1N1 and H3N2 need different proteins to get in, and if you get rid of the right protein, a specific virus can’t get in.”
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While these findings identify a critical cellular pathway for viral entry, the study was conducted using isolated cells, the researchers acknowledged.
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Further research is needed to determine whether blocking the protein is safe and effective within a live, complex human respiratory system.
Bruce and the team hope to conduct further research to determine whether this Rab11B-dependency is a fundamental property of H3N2, or if it’s a trait unique to currently circulating flu strains.
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Eating processed meat like ham, sausage and bacon may be linked to a higher risk of certain types of cancer, according to new research.
While health organizations have already confirmed that processed meat can contribute to colon cancer, this study looked closer at cancers in the upper digestive tract, where the link has historically been less clear.
To understand these connections, researchers from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), one of the world’s largest long-term nutrition and cancer cohorts, tracked the health and diets of 450,112 people across Europe for an average of 14 years.
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The study group included 131,426 men and 318,686 women, according to the study’s press release.
During the follow-up period, 876 people developed stomach cancer and 215 people developed esophageal adenocarcinoma, which is cancer of the tube connecting the mouth to the stomach.
For female participants, eating both processed meat and white meat was linked to an increased risk of developing the disease. (iStock)
Researchers tracked where the stomach cancers grew, separating them into the upper part of the stomach near the throat and the lower part of the stomach.
The researchers also sorted the tumors into two categories based on how the cancer cells appeared under a microscope: intestinal, which forms more organized structures, and diffuse, in which the cells are more scattered throughout the tissue.
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After adjusting for other lifestyle factors, the researchers found that for every extra 30 grams of processed meat a person ate per day, their overall risk of stomach cancer went up by 9%. Eating that same extra 30 grams a day was also linked to a 13% higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma.
A standard single slice of regular deli-sliced ham or lunch meat averages around 28 grams, according to USDA data and nutritional tracking databases.
An extra 20 grams of white meat, such as chicken and turkey, was linked to a 12% higher risk of cancer in the main body of the stomach. (iStock)
An extra 20 grams of white meat, such as chicken or turkey, was linked to a 12% higher risk of cancer in the main body of the stomach, the researchers noted.
The study also revealed differences between men and women. For male participants, only processed meat showed a clear, statistically significant link to a higher risk of stomach cancer. For female participants, however, eating both processed meat and white meat was linked to an increased risk.
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These findings align with global health benchmarks, particularly those established by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The agency has long classified processed meat as a known human carcinogen, primarily due to its strong, well-documented links to colorectal cancer.
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However, health organizations have also consistently pointed to a potential, yet less definitive, relationship between these meats and cancers of the stomach.
Eating 30 grams of processed meat a day, or the equivalent to one slice of ham, was linked to a 13% higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma. (iStock)
Further scientific investigation is needed to confirm the findings and to account for other underlying risk factors, such as certain stomach infections, which could interact with dietary habits.
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A key limitation of the study is its reliance on self-reported diets, which can sometimes lead to inaccuracies in how participants recall their meat consumption over time, the researchers noted.
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The findings were published in the International Journal of Cancer.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers requesting comment.
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