


Former President Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his personal office announced on Sunday afternoon.
Biden, 82, was diagnosed last week after he had dealt with increased urinal symptoms and is currently reviewing treatment options.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” a spokesman for Biden’s personal office said in a statement.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
The Gleason score of 9 in Biden’s diagnosis suggests an aggressive form of cancer likely to spread quickly. He will likely require chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and forms of pain management to tackle the illness.
The cancer diagnosis will invite further scrutiny of the deterioration of Biden’s health over the past couple of years, the driving factor in his decision last summer not to run for a second term.
Biden’s visible mental decline, especially toward the end of his presidency, and his disastrous debate performance last June, caused a revolt in the Democratic Party and led to the end of his reelection campaign.
Before the debate, Biden’s memory problems were observed by special counsel Robert Hur in the report on his investigation into Biden’s possession of classified documents.
Newly released audio of Biden’s lengthy interview with Hur brought even more attention to the former president’s struggle to remember key dates — including the year his son Beau died of cancer — and put coherent sentences together. When Biden was in office, the administration used executive privilege to fight the release of the Hur audio following his bombshell report.
Democrats are still reckoning with the party’s lack of attention to Biden’s mental stamina until it had become too late to ignore. A new book, Original Sin, by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper, has revealed new behind-the-scenes details of Biden’s mental struggles and his advisers’ efforts to cover it up.
Conservatives frequently pointed out Biden’s mishaps, dating back to his 2020 run for president, and the majority of Americans long believed Biden was too old to serve.