Medical experts have questioned claims that failure to test Joe Biden for prostate cancer was a routine omission.
Recently, the former president’s team disclosed that the 82-year-old, who stepped down in January, has been diagnosed with an ‘aggressive’ type of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones.
Biden’s team noted that his doctors halted prostate-specific antigen testing in 2014, even though US guidelines advise routine screenings for all men over the age of 70.
Following the news of his condition, several medical professionals have raised concerns about how such a severe illness went undetected for so long in the ex-US president, who was believed to have access to top-tier healthcare.
‘To take a blood test from a man over 50 and not do a PSA is practically an assault. It is the most male-specific health-related blood test you can do,’ a senior surgeon told The Telegraph.
‘If you get an abnormal result, then you do a scan (I imagine the White House has an MRI scanner) and then after that you do a biopsy. It is not as if we throw drugs at anyone with a high PSA, but I simply cannot envision a world where nobody at the White House ever ticked yes to a PSA test for him.’
And many doctors have rejected the idea that Biden stopped getting testing altogether, raising questions of whether medical professionals deliberately failed to screen the former president.
The announcement last week led to an outpouring support for the former commander-in-chief, though also launched conspiracy theories about how long he had cancer.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden pose for a selfie photo, in this handout social media picture released May 19, 2025
But the former president had to shut down conspiracies he was diagnosed with prostate cancer before last week.
‘Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer,’ a spokesperson for Biden insisted on Tuesday.
The statement came after President Donald Trump repeated on Monday conspiracies that Biden knew he had cancer for a long time – and that hiding the diagnosis was part of his team’s cover-up of his health decline while in office.
‘I’m surprised that it wasn’t, you know, the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage nine, that’s a long time,’ Trump said.
Questions about the former president’s health have swirled for years. But after Biden bombed his late June debate against Trump, questions about his fitness for office got even louder.
Then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre initially bungled a response when asked why a Parkinson’s disease expert had visited the White House multiple times.
Additionally, Biden’s White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, never took questions from the press, unlike Trump’s original White House physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, now a MAGA-aligned Republican representing Texas in Congress.
Trump’s second White House doctor, Dr. Sean Conley, addressed the press when Trump contracted COVID-19 just weeks before the 2020 election.
Biden’s history of covering up health problems has sparked a media storm in the US, with many Democrats believing that Trump’s 2024 victory was partly the result of Biden’s lack of transparency surrounding his health and cognitive decline.
The news of his cancer diagnosis also comes at the same time that Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again was released.
The book, written by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, argued that Biden’s ‘physical deterioration – most apparent in his halting walk – had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election.’
