Shortly after completing today’s Morning Jolt investigating why President Biden never took a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, I saw outrage on X that Dr. Céline Gounder, a contributor at CBS News and a member of President Biden’s Transition Covid-19 advisory board, had claimed that Biden did not get a PSA test “to save money.”
That seems unbelievable — in the sense that, no, you should not believe it. (The X post is approaching 1 million views.) The first problem is that if you watch the video at the link, Gounder never says anything of the sort, at least nothing related to the cost of the test.
Gayle King: So it would take a while to do that. Wouldn’t he be getting regular checkups?
Dr. Gounder: It depends on the kind of cancer you’re talking about here. We do know it is quite aggressive, again. So the time in which it would take to spread to the bones is going to be shorter than with a less aggressive cancer. And he’s 82. Normally doctors will stop screening for prostate cancer at 75 or so, because after that, the prostate cancers you typically pick up are typically very slow-growing. And so the harms of all of the testing and treatment for something that may not kill you, you know, you’re talking about risk vs. benefit, it may not be worth the risk.
Tony Dokoupil: Isn’t there a blood test that men can take to know if they can have an issue that might warrant further examination?
Dr. Gounder: So there’s something that we call a PSA test, but that can be indicative of many different things. It could just be that you have an enlarged prostate. Maybe you have a low grade infection in the prostate. There are many things that can cause that. So this is again, why, after a certain age, doctors will typically stop screening for prostate cancer. But in his case, it’s not screening. It’s important to emphasize that this was diagnostic, because he had urinary symptoms, and there was a reason to do more testing.
Nate Burleson: Quickly, what is your final advice for men of a certain age?
Dr. Gounder: Well, men of a certain you need to be seeing your primary care doctor for regular exams, and it’s not just for prostate cancer.
As discussed in today’s Morning Jolt, depending on risk factors, PSA tests are recommended for men between 40 and 69. But there’s a problem with the argument that “regular PSAs are not recommended for the average man in his 70s or 80s.” The average man in his 70s or 80s is not the president of the United States. The consequences of not running Biden’s blood through another test — which is neither expensive nor invasive nor time-consuming — are quite severe, literally a matter of life and death. The decision to not run another test on the president’s blood over the past four years — if indeed that’s what happened — led to just about the most dire outcome possible.