US senator John McCain, who has been battling brain cancer since last year, has decided to end his treatment, his family announced on Friday.
"The progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict. With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment," the family said in a statement.
Mr McCain, who will turn 82 next week, is a titan of the Senate, having spent more than three decades in the upper chamber of Congress. He also is a military veteran who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
He was diagnosed last year with glioblastoma, the same aggressive form of brain cancer that took the life of another Senate giant, Ted Kennedy, in 2009.
