Joe Biden’s announcement Sunday that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer surprised many, but a doctor told MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday that Biden has probably had cancer for many years.
“Oh, he’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who is the brother of politician Rahm Emanuel and talent agent Ari Emanuel. “It’s a little surprising, I look back at the records, and there’s no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released, that he had a prostate-specific antigen.”
The fact that the cancer had spread to the bone, Emanuel told hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, indicated that it has been in Biden for “for a very long time.”
“We don’t know [how many years], obviously, and it is a little surprising to many of us oncologists that he wasn’t diagnosed earlier,” Emanuel said, noting that a regular prostate exam would have very likely caught the cancer.
“I would say it is surprising that he did not get this test given the fact that the proclivity of presidential physicians is test more rather than less, and I think it is a little, it’s a little strange,” Emanuel added. “We do know from the population, like I said, 7 percent of people diagnosed with prostate cancer get it diagnosed at the metastatic moment, when it’s already metastatic. So it’s not unusual that people can say, ‘No, I don’t want the test,’ or their doctor doesn’t recommend it or they don’t get the tests for one reason or another.”
The expert opinion of Emanuel, who also served as an adviser in the Obama administration and was on Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board when he was president, indicates that either Biden’s medical evaluations weren’t as thorough as they could have been, or that the former president kept this information hidden from the public.
Whatever the case may be, these new cancer revelations do not reflect well on the Biden administration, which has already been facing criticism in recent weeks for how the final months of Biden’s presidency were handled, and how details of his mental decline were kept from the public and his own staff. It seems that may have also extended to the president’s physical health.
The post Morning Joe Stunned as Oncologist Says Biden Had Cancer for Years appeared first on New Republic.
