Former President Biden’s heartbreaking prostate cancer diagnosis has drawn renewed attention to his 2022 slip-up in which he claimed to have had cancer during a public speech.
Biden’s alarming comments came during a speech about emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Claymont, Del., and which he appeared to blame for his cancer.
“That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Biden said during his 2022 remarks about global warming at Brayton Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts.
Biden’s use of the present tense “have” raised eyebrows at the time, but former White House spokesperson Andrew Bates referred The Post to Washington Post fact-check honcho Glenn Kessler, who suggested it was a reference to “non-melanoma skin cancers.”
“Check out Biden’s medical report. Before he became president, he’d had non-melanoma skin cancers removed,” Kessler posted on X at the time in response to consternation about Biden’s cancer comment.
Former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor didn’t describe Biden as having cancer in his medical reports of the 46th president from around that time.
But he did address Biden’s history with skin cancer and appeared to blame it on excessive sun exposure during his days as a lifeguard instead of chemicals from oil refineries.
“It is well-established that President Biden did spend a good deal of time in the sun in his youth,” O’Connor explained in a 2021 report on the former president’s health.
“He has had several localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he started his presidency. These lesions were completely excised, with clear margins.”
On Sunday, a Biden spokesperson announced the tragic news of the former president’s “aggressive” cancer diagnosis and noted that it had metastasized to the bone.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” a spokesperson said. “On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”
Gleason scores go up to 10, with the 8–10 range generally seen as advanced forms of cancer that are unlikely to be cured, though there are treatments that may slow its growth.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management,” Biden’s spokesperson added. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
Given the advanced nature of Biden’s diagnosis, some medical experts have wondered how the cancer wasn’t caught earlier.
“He’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former member of Biden’s transition team, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday. “He did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days.”
“He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. Yes, I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that,” Emanuel, who helped craft the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, added.
Others, such as Howard Forman, a physician and former professor at the Yale School of Medicine, have said that it was “inconceivable” Biden’s prostate cancer wasn’t caught earlier.
“It is inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the Presidency,” Forman wrote on X. “Gleason grade 9 would have had an elevated PSA level for some time before this diagnosis. And he must have had a PSA test numerous times before. This is odd.”
About 13% of men are likely to suffer from prostate cancer within their lifetimes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2015, Biden lost his eldest son, Beau, to brain cancer and later led the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
“Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support,” Biden said on X alongside a smiling photo of him and his wife, Jill.
The cancer revelation came in the midst of a brutal news cycle for Biden in which Democrats and pundits were reflecting on concerns about his age and mental acuity ahead of the release of “Original Sin,” a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson.
