Experts say Joe Biden’s cancer no longer curable, but treatable
Former President Joe Biden’s cancer cells are ranked with a “high Gleason score.” Here’s what that means for his treatment.
WASHINGTON − White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump still has faith in the quality of health care being provided to him in the wake of his predecessor’s cancer diagnosis.
“He trusts his physicians,” Leavitt said.
A spokesperson for Joe Biden announced May 18 that the former president has an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. Biden’s advanced cancer has raised questions about why the disease wasn’t detected earlier.
“I think those are questions that we all have. When we see patients, we’re wondering could we have caught this sooner?” Dr. Curtiland Deville, a radiation oncologist and medical director at Johns Hopkins Proton Therapy Center, said on CNN May 19. “We don’t want patients to progress to the metastatic state because they won’t be curable. Again, certainly treatable but not curable.”
Presidents receive regular health evaluations and have a team of physicians at their disposal.
Biden had a routine physical in February 2024 during the last year of his presidency. The doctor’s report said he was “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male.”
The doctors said he was receiving treatment for sleep apnea and that all of his other medical conditions remain “stable and well controlled.”
Leavitt said the current White House physician is “phenomenal.”
“The team of physicians that take care of the president, particularly at Walter Reed Medical Center, are great,” she added.
Deville, on CNN, noted that prostate screening guidelines discuss stopping screening at age 70 for men “if they have normal risk and don’t have particular risk factors of prostate cancer or haven’t had an elevated PSA.” Elevated PSA − prostate-specific antigen – can be a sign of cancer.
“Someone like the president you would presume was still having their PSA blood test and the digital rectal exam on an annual basis for screening potentially,” he said.
Deville said there are “scenarios” where the PSA level can stay low and “not reach the threshold” of getting a “workup and a biopsy until it was much further along.”
Otis Brawley, a medical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University, told the Washington Post that the prostate cancer screening test is not very good.
“We need a better test,” Brawley said.