Christopher Hitchens On '60 Minutes': 'I'm A Member Of A Cancer Elite' (VIDEO)

Writer Christopher Hitchens--who has been battling cancer since June of last year-- is due to appear on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday. The network put up a clip of Steve Kroft's profile of Hitchens on Friday. In it, Hitchens calls himself a member of the "cancer elite," and says, "I rather look down on people with lesser cancers."

Hitchens tells Kroft that the esophogeal cancer he is battling has just a 5 percent survival rate, which, he says, "are not the odds I would have picked."

He also discusses what his biggest fear was when he got the diagnosis.

"I was very afraid it would stop me writing," he says. "And I was really petrified with fear about that because I thought that would, among all things, diminish my will to live, because being a writer's what I am rather than what I do."

Hitchens gave a number of interviews in 2010 where he discussed the disease. Among others, he told The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that he was "dying," but said to PBS' Charlie Rose that, given the opportunity, he would still lead the hard-drinking, heavy-smoking lifestyle that contributed to his cancer.

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