Chavez Suggest US Gave World Leaders Cancer

Argentina's Cristina Fernandez has become the latest Latin American leader to be diagnosed with cancer, prompting Hugo Chavez to wonder if the US is to blame. "Would it be strange if they had developed a technology to induce cancer, and for no one to know it?" pondered the Venezuelan leader, who was treated for cancer earlier this year. Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, and her predecessor, Lula da Silva, have also battled cancer in recent years.

Chavez said he didn't want to "make any reckless accusations," but he finds the number of cancer cases "very, very, very strange," CNN reports. Chavez noted that details of American studies in the late '40s when Guatemalans were deliberately infected with syphilis have only recently surfaced, and wondered if details of a US cancer-causing plan would come to light in another 50 years. "I don't know," he said. "I'm just putting the thought out there." (More Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner stories.)