By Kavita Mistry 
Former U.S. President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his office said Sunday (May 18, 2025).
Mr. Biden was seen by doctors last week after urinary symptoms and a prostate nodule were found. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday (May 16, 2025), with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”
Prostate cancers are given a score called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Mr. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.
When prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it often spreads to the bones. Metastasized cancer is much harder to treat than localised cancer because it can be hard for drugs to reach all the tumours and completely root out the disease.
However, when prostate cancers need hormones to grow, as in Mr. Biden’s case, they can be susceptible to treatment that deprives the tumours of hormones.
Wishes for his recovery
Many political leaders sent Mr. Biden their wishes for his recovery.
President Donald Trump, a longtime political opponent, posted on social media that he was saddened by the news and “we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”
Pete Buttigieg, who was Mr. Biden’s transportation secretary, called the former president “a man of deep faith and extraordinary resilience.”
The health of Mr. Biden, 82, was a dominant concern among voters during his time as president. After a calamitous debate performance in June while seeking reelection, Mr. Biden abandoned his bid for a second term. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee and lost to Mr. Trump, a Republican who returned to the White House after a four-year hiatus.
Reject concerns about his age
But in recent days, Mr. Biden rejected concerns about his age despite reporting in the new book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aides had shielded the public from the extent of his decline while serving as President.
In February 2023, Mr. Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.
In 2022, Mr. Biden made a “cancer moonshot” one of his administration’s priorities with the goal of halving the cancer death rate over the next 25 years. The initiative was a continuation of his work as vice president to address a disease that had killed his older son, Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.
His father, when announcing the goal to halve the cancer death rate, said this could be an “American moment to prove to ourselves and, quite frankly, the world that we can do really big things.”
Published – May 19, 2025 03:53 am IST